U.S. looks past Karzai rival's decision to quit

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By Tom LoBianco

White House officials downplayed Afghan presidential challenger Abdullah Abdullah's decision to pull out of this week's scheduled runoff election and said they would work with President Hamid Karzai.

Mr. Abdullah, the country's former foreign minister, withdrew Sunday from the presidential contest against Mr. Karzai, almost certainly handing the incumbent another five-year term in office. Mr. Abdullah had accused Mr. Karzai of not allowing for a fair vote.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement that she understood Mr. Abdullah's concerns and hoped he would continue to stay active in the political process in the war-torn nation but did not explicitly say the U.S. would break from supporting the runoff election.

"It is now a matter for the Afghan authorities to decide on a way ahead that brings this electoral process to a conclusion in line with the Afghan constitution," Mrs. Clinton said. "We will support the next president and the people of Afghanistan, who seek and deserve a better future."

White House adviser David Axelrod said most polls showed that Mr. Abdullah was likely to lose the Nov. 7 election.

"Mr. Abdullah has exercised his rights as a candidate to withdraw. He has made a political decision to withdraw from this contest. And that doesn't markedly change the situation," Mr. Axelrod said on CBS' "Face The Nation."

White House adviser Valerie Jarrett spoke similarly, telling ABC's "This Week" that "we don't think that it's going to add a complication to the strategy."

An international elections commission formed to investigate accusations of fraud in the national elections threw out more than a million ballots and chastised the Karzai administration. Top Democrats successfully lobbied Mr. Karzai to concede to a runoff between the top two vote-getters.

"We're going to deal with the government that is there, and obviously there are issues we need to discuss, such as reducing the high level of corruption there," Mr. Axelrod said.

Also Sunday, senior White House aides said President Obama likely will take some more weeks to decide whether to send more troops to Afghanistan and to decide on the strategy to pursue against the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Mr. Obama's appointed leader of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, reportedly has asked for up to 60,000 more troops to quell increasing violence, particular in some of the country's more remote regions.

"I expect the president will make a decision within weeks. As you know, he has gone through a very rigorous process because the goal here is not just to make an arithmetic judgment about the number of troops, but to make sure that we have the right strategy to reach our goal," Mr. Axelrod said.

Mr. Obama's Democratic supporters on Capitol Hill had sought to buy the administration time, suggesting that any decision should wait until after the country's runoff election.

Mr. Obama met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday to discuss strategy in Afghanistan, another of the increasingly regular meetings with his military commanders regarding the war there. Gen. McChrystal has not been quiet about the fact that he wants more troops.

"This isn't just a matter of how many troops are sent over. Although that is a very important component, we have to look at what's going on on the ground. We have to look at what our allies are doing. We have to look at the state of the government in Afghanistan," Ms. Jarrett said on "This Week."

Leading critics, including Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, have said that the longer the president waits to send in more troops, the more lives he puts at risk.

"I have looked for every reason in the world to put off a decision, and the longer this decision hangs, the more jeopardy and the more danger our troops on the ground there are in the middle of," House Minority Leader John A. Boehner said on CNN's "State of the Union." "We've had the highest casualty totals in years over the last month or two. Why? Because of all of the uncertainty around what the president's going to decide."

Still, Mr. Boehner agreed that the Abdullah withdrawal changes little for the U.S. It "really says more about the fact that he knew he wasn't going to win," Mr. Boehner said.