Afghan authorities played down fears Thursday of the Taliban wrecking next week's presidential election run-off and tried to assuage worries of a repeat of the rampant fraud which tarred the first round.
As the international community insisted a Taliban attack on a Kabul hostel, which killed at least five foreign UN staff, would not disrupt the November 7 poll, Afghan officials said the threat from the Islamists had lessened.
And organisers of the election said they had agreed to a demand from President Hamid Karzai's challenger, ex-foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, for 20,000 of his observers to be accredited to help prevent vote rigging.
"We will try our best to avoid the mistakes made in the first round to hold a transparent and fraud-free election," said Independent Election Commission (IEC) deputy chief electoral officer Zakaria Barakzai.
The attack on the Bekhtar guesthouse in downtown Kabul, carried out by three Taliban fighters who blew themselves up after a two-hour gunbattle, followed a threat by the Islamists to disrupt next week's election.
While the Taliban's insurgency has been largely concentrated in southern provinces, the deaths of the UN workers brought home the stark reality that the several thousand foreigners based in Kabul are now in the militia's crosshairs.
The United Nations said its head of mission in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, had spoken to the Afghan interior minister, who had given assurances that security would be enhanced in the wake of the attack.
The UN was also holding a review of all of its security measures, with spokesman Dan McNorton acknowledging that "it's not business as usual."
Attacks by the Taliban, the Islamist militia toppled by US-led forces in late 2001, were a major deterrent to voters in the first round of the election on August 20 when turnout in some provinces was as low as five percent.
Almost 200 violent incidents around the first vote were attributed to the Taliban, including amputations of fingers marked with purple ink as proof of voting, and rocket and grenade attacks on polling stations.
A Taliban spokesman said that Wednesday's assault in Kabul signalled the start of a new bloody campaign to wreck the elections.
The Afghan defence ministry, however, played down the prospects of widespread Taliban attacks this time, and said authorities had learned lessons from the first round of voting.
"The enemy had prepared for months with foreign support, allocating loads of funds to disrupt the elections in a well-planned effort," spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi said.
"This time round, they haven't had the same amount of time to prepare a campaign of attacks and the Pakistani Taliban who helped the Afghan Taliban last time to disturb the election are busy fighting in Pakistan," he added.
A White House spokesman said the Taliban's attempts to wreck the poll would not succeed.
"In Kabul obviously there is an attempt by some to disrupt the will of the Afghan people in choosing their next government that this administration believes will not succeed," said Robert Gibbs.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon also insisted the organisation's focus would not be deflected but offered no detail about how to secure hundreds of staff in the country, many living in similar compounds to that stormed by the Taliban.
"It is quite an unfortunate fact of life that we cannot ensure 100 percent the security because of these suicidal terrorist attacks," Ban said.
Karzai was forced into a run-off after falling fractionally short of an outright majority in a first round riddled with fraud.
Nearly a quarter of all votes were eventually discounted after being deemed fraudulent and Abdullah has demanded the head of the IEC, who was appointed by Karzai, be sacked.
The IEC again rejected calls for Azizullah Ludin's dismissal but it did agree to a request by Abdullah that more of his supporters have accreditation rights at polling centres.
"One part of Dr. Abdullah's demands was 20,000 new candidate agents from his side should be accredited, we agree to that and we will deliver the accreditation badges to his campaign by Saturday," said the IEC's Barakzai.
"Our field offices will be focusing on those areas where fraud was happening in the first round and also we are encouraging candidate agents to send their agents to all the districts that were problematic in the first round."
Source: AFP South Asian Edition
