New UN envoy to Afghanistan arrives at troubled mission
Posted: 14 March 2010 0525 hrs

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KABUL : The new UN representative to Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, arrived Saturday to take up his post at a mission that has suffered blows to its standing and morale in the past year.

De Mistura, an Italian-Swedish diplomat, said he would focus on improving the stability and economy of the country, while respecting its sovereignty.

"Whatever the UN will be doing -- and we will be doing what we can in order to assist both the stability and the socio-economic improvement of the Afghan people -- it will be done remembering that it should be Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and in total respect of their own sovereignty," he told reporters.

"The Afghan people have suffered a lot and have endured a lot of difficult times. They deserve international support, but they deserve above all a better future. And the UN will do its part."

De Mistura, who held the same post in Iraq, replaces Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide as head of the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA), established in 2001 after the Taliban regime was overturned.

He takes the reins at a mission that has lost standing in the eyes of Afghans and the international community, after Eide had a public spat with his deputy, American Peter Galbraith, over last year's fraud-tainted elections.

Galbraith accused Eide of ignoring, and then trying to cover up, massive fraud in the August presidential election, allegations Eide denied and for which Galbraith was sacked.

The elections were later deemed to have been massively fraudulent, with around a third of the votes case for President Hamid Karzai thrown out.

Karzai was eventually declared the winner and inaugurated in November.

The UN's problems were exacerbated when militants stormed a guesthouse in Kabul housing UN election workers, five of whom were killed.

The attack led to the evacuation of hundreds of UN staff, and those remaining were forced to take stringent security measures that many say privately have made life -- and recruitment -- difficult.

De Mistura is set to have a busy year as parliamentary elections are scheduled for September, having been moved from May.

Afghanistan's Western supporters have called for reforms before they agree to put up the hundreds of millions of dollars the polls will cost.

Karzai drew criticism last month when he amended the electoral law to give himself full control of the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), stripping the UN of authority to pick three of the body's five members.

But a spokesman said Saturday the president had backpeddled on the move, agreeing to let two non-Afghans join the watchdog ahead of the September poll.

The ECC played a major role in rooting out last year's electoral fraud.

- AFP /ls