President Obama Talks to Karzai

ABC’s Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller report:

President Obama spoke with Afghan President Hamid Karzai this morning, and congratulating him for accepting the report of the United Nations-backed Election Complaint Commission which ruled that he garnered under 50% of the vote in the August election after vote fraud had been factored in, mandating a recount.

“This has been a very difficult time in Afghanistan to not only carry out an election under difficult circumstances — where there were a whole host of security issues that had to be resolved — but also, post-election, a lot of uncertainty,” the president said in the Oval Office. “President Karzai, as well as the other candidates, I think, have shown that they have the interests of the Afghan people at heart, that this is a reflection of a commitment to rule of law and an insistence that the Afghan people’s will should be done.”

The president said he “expressed the American people’s appreciation for this step.”

The President singled out for particular appreciation US troops in Afghanistan “who are doing so much to help bring about a more secure and prosperous and democratic Afghanistan,” the US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and his team, and Sen. John Kerry, R-Mass., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “who was in the region traveling and ended up working extensively with Ambassador Eikenberry and was extraordinarily constructive and very helpful.  So I think he deserves great congratulations.”

Mr. Obama said he’d continue to work with the international security force partners “as well as the Afghan government, however this election turns out, to ensure that…we can move Afghanistan towards peace and security and prosperity, and that the will of the Afghan people is ultimately done.”

In the past few weeks, the president’s references to the Afghan government were often made in statements expressing concern about whether a future Afghan government would be seen as legitimate within the country. If not, the president and his team made clear, any further commitment of US forces would be problematic.

There was no such reference today to those concerns.

“We are pleased with the steps that have been taken today, and we hope that we can build on this progress,” the president said.

He made his remarks alongside Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, with whom he discussed the process of making sure Iraqi elections can take place in January according to schedule, as well as economic development.

“What is wonderful about this trip is that it represents a transition in our bilateral relationship so that we are moving now to issues beyond security and we are beginning to talk about economy, trade, commerce,” the president said.

Mr. Obama also said that he reemphasized his commitment to withdraw US combat troops from Iraq by August 2010, with all troops out of Iraq by 2011.

Maliki emphasized his desire for the US  to end international sanctions since, as he said in Arabic, “we don’t have weapons of mass destruction anymore, and today that we have put forth a lot of common sacrifices, and today that there is a pluralistic political system in Iraq….Iraq has moved beyond a dictatorship and beyond the destruction and we are trying to rebuild.”

-jpt