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Galbraith was announced as the next United Nations' Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan on March 25, 2009.[3]Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan.[4] However, Galbraith abruptly left the country in mid September 2009 on request of UN Special Representative to Afghanistan Kai Eide following a dispute over the handling of the reported fraud in the 2009 Afghan presidential election.[5] On September 30, the UN announced that he had been removed from his position by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.[6] In response to his firing, Galbraith told He is considered a close ally of The Times, "I was not prepared to be complicit in a cover-up or in an effort to downplay the fraud that took place. I felt we had to face squarely the fraud that took place. Kai downplayed the fraud."[7]

Abdullah Abdullah, the main challenger to Afghanistan's incumbent President Karzai, has called for an inquiry into the UN's role since the August poll.

He said serious questions had been raised about the neutrality of the UN special envoy to the country, Kai Eide.

Along with the Afghan authorities, the UN is responsible for the election's smooth running and investigating claims of fraud.

The accusation comes after the dismissal of a key deputy to Mr Eide.

Peter Galbraith said he was sacked over a dispute with his superior about how to handle allegations of fraud.

He said Mr Eide had chosen to side with President Hamid Karzai, an accusation the UN denies.

Dr Abdullah said the incident had "greatly damaged" the UN's standing in the country.

A former senior United Nations diplomat in Kabul has made a scathing attack on the UN's handling of Afghanistan's disputed elections, claiming that almost one in three of the votes cast for president Hamid Karzai were fraudulent.

Peter Galbraith, the former deputy head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, singled out his former chief, Kai Eide, for criticism, saying he had deliberately played down the level of cheating in an election where, in one region, "10 times as many votes were recorded as voters actually cast".

Galbraith was sacked last week, after his disagreements with Eide, a Norwegian diplomat in charge of the UN mission, about how to deal with electoral fraud became public. Galbraith said the extraordinary level of fraud in the August vote "has handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners".

The election was a "foreseeable train wreck", he said, with Eide standing idle as Afghan election authorities and ministers loyal to the president avoided taking steps that could have reduced massive fraud.

What I really saw in the recent Afghan elections

Before firing me last week from my post as his deputy special representative in Afghanistan, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conveyed one last instruction: Do not talk to the press. In effect, I was being told to remain a team player after being thrown off the team. Nonetheless, I agreed.

As my differences with my boss, Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, had already been well publicized (through no fault of either of us), I asked only that the statement announcing my dismissal reflect the real reasons. Alain LeRoy, the head of U.N. peacekeeping and my immediate superior in New York, proposed that the United Nations say I was being recalled over a "disagreement as to how the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) would respond to electoral fraud." Although this was not entirely accurate -- the dispute was really about whether the U.N. mission would respond to the massive electoral fraud -- I agreed.

Instead, the United Nations announced my recall as occurring "in the best interests of the mission," and U.N. press officials told reporters on background that my firing was necessitated by a "personality clash" with Eide, a friend of 15 years who had introduced me to my future wife.

I might have tolerated even this last act of dishonesty in a dispute dating back many months if the stakes were not so high. For weeks, Eide had been denying or playing down the fraud in Afghanistan's recent presidential election, telling me he was concerned that even discussing the fraud might inflame tensions in the country. But in my view, the fraud was a fact that the United Nations had to acknowledge or risk losing its credibility with the many Afghans who did not support President Hamid Karzai.

I also felt loyal to my U.N. colleagues who worked in a dangerous environment to help Afghans hold honest elections -- at least five of whom have now told me they are leaving jobs they love in disgust over the events leading to my firing.Afghanistan's presidential election, held Aug. 20, should have been a milestone in the country's transition from 30 years of war to stability and democracy. Instead, it was just the opposite. As many as 30 percent of Karzai's votes were fraudulent, and lesser fraud was committed on behalf of other candidates. In several provinces, including Kandahar, four to 10 times as many votes were recorded as voters actually cast. The fraud has handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners.

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Mr Galbraith angered Afghan President Hamid Karzai by reportedly calling for a complete recount of the vote.

The election has been overshadowed by widespread allegations of fraud. According to EU election observers, about 1.5m votes - about a quarter of all ballots - cast in August's presidential vote could be fraudulent.

They say that 1.1 million votes cast for President Karzai are suspicious.

"Once it became clear to Kai Eide that this evidence would be harmful to President Karzai, he ordered us to do nothing with it," he told BBC World News America.

"He had good relations with Karzai, and he became Karzai's man in the United Nations, rather than the United Nations representative to Karzai."

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President Hamid Karzai has expressed concern about the investigation into election fraud in Afghanistan.

In an interview on US TV, Mr Karzai said the resignation of an Afghan member of the UN-backed panel "cast serious doubt" on its work.

Mr Karzai said that fraud was likely to have taken place in the August vote, but called it "good and fair".

He leads the preliminary count but the panel's findings - due imminently - could force the vote to a second round.

The election has been mired in controversy since it was held in August, with accusations that fraud was committed on a huge scale.

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KABUL, Afghanistan — The United States and other powers struggled Saturday to persuade Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai to accept a deal to resolve the dispute over the country's tainted presidential election and avert a political crisis that could spark civil unrest and jeopardize the fight against the Taliban-led insurgency.

The Afghan leader's closest challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, told U.S. officials last week that he would agree to a deal under certain conditions, said three U.S. officials, who all requested anonymity.

Under the plan, Karzai would accept the fact that when fraudulent votes are thrown out, he failed to win more than half the vote in the Aug. 20 election. In return, Abdullah, the second-place finisher, would forgo a runoff by withdrawing and endorsing a Karzai-led unity government that included some of his allies, the officials said. Karzai also would have to pursue key political changes to root out official corruption and improve public services.

"If you can mediate a settlement which leads to a stronger and more unified government, our sense is that would be a means of garnering the most significant support by the Afghan people and enhancing the perceived legitimacy of that government," said a senior Obama administration official in Washington.

A panel probing fraud claims in the Afghan election has found Hamid Karzai did not gain enough valid votes for an outright win, the BBC understands.

Preliminary results from August's first round had placed Mr Karzai comfortably over the 50% plus one vote threshold needed to avoid a runoff.

But one poll monitoring group estimates that almost one million of Mr Karzai's votes have now been deemed invalid.

Poll rules say Mr Karzai must now face a runoff against his nearest rival.

In the US, the White House said it was "incredibly important" for the world to see a legitimate Afghan government.

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Abdullah Abdullah, President Hamid Karzai's rival in the second round of Afghanistan's presidential election, is reportedly close to quitting the poll.

Mr Abdullah called for the resignation of key election officials, cabinet ministers and provincial governors as a way to mitigate fraud and corruption.

The deadline for those conditions to be met expires on Saturday.

A senior adviser said that in talks on Friday, Mr Abdullah's team decided he should not take part in the poll.

President Hamid Karzai's rival in the second round of the Afghan presidential election has announced in Kabul that he is withdrawing from the poll.

"I will not participate in the election," Dr Abdullah told supporters, saying his demands for ensuring a fraud-free election had not been met.

But he stopped short of calling for a boycott of next Saturday's vote.

Mr Karzai had rejected his demand that election officials who presided over the first round should be dismissed.

Next Saturday's Afghan presidential election run-off has been cancelled by the independent election commission, officials say.

The decision comes a day after sole challenger Abdullah Abdullah pulled out, leaving only President Hamid Karzai in the race.

Dr Abdullah, who had demanded key poll officials quit, said he was quitting as he did not think it would be fair.

The first round of the vote in August was marred by mass electoral fraud.

President Karzai had been the favourite to win the run-off after gaining more votes in the first round on 20 August.

The BBC's Andrew North in Kabul says a key reason for holding a run-off was to try to restore some legitimacy to the election after the discredited first round.

Afghan officials today declared Hamid Karzai the winner of the country's disputed presidential poll after cancelling a planned runoff election.

The announcement came after Karzai's main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, dropped out of the race on the grounds that the vote would not be free or fair.

"The Independent Election Commission [IEC] declares the esteemed Hamid Karzai as the president … because he was the winner of the first round and the only candidate in the second round," the commission's chairman, Azizullah Ludin, told reporters.

"The constitution of Afghanistan does not require any sort of turnout parameters for the second round," he said, adding that not holding a second round would save money.

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“I was terminated for no reason at all and this is the reason I am taking legal action,” Mr. Galbraith said in the e-mail message. “The U.N. has never given me any reason for my termination and has never offered any public explanation. After I was proven correct in what I said about election fraud, U.N. officials attempted to damage my reputation with unfounded and untrue allegations such as those made in an Oct. 12 press conference that I proposed an unconstitutional solution to Afghanistan’s election crisis.”

On Friday, Martin Nesirky, spokesman for the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said the reason Mr. Galbraith “was terminated was that the secretary general determined that such action would be in the interests of the organization.”

“Further elaboration would not be appropriate at this time,” the spokesman added, “since Mr. Galbraith has chosen to challenge the termination of his appointment.”

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Afghan president Hamid Karzai's "mental stability" is in doubt and he may even be taking illegal drugs, a former top UN envoy to the war-torn country told MSNBC television.

"He's prone to tirades. He can be very emotional, act impulsively. In fact, some of the palace insiders say that he has a certain fondness for some of Afghanistan's most profitable exports," Peter Galbraith told the US network.

Asked to back up his claim, the former UN deputy head of mission in Afghanistan replied: "There are reports to that effect, but whatever the cause is the reality is he can be very emotional."

Mr Galbraith's comments came amid a deepening feud with the US that saw him reportedly charge that Washington was interfering with Afghan affairs and that foreigners helped rig last year's elections.

"The fraud was organised by Karzai's appointees and he was the beneficiary of it," said Mr Galbraith, an American who was fired by the UN in a dispute over how far to press Afghan authorities on electoral fraud charges.

"This continued tirade raises questions about his mental stability and frankly this has been something that has been of concern to diplomats in Kabul."

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