Violence to Keep Afghan Polls Closed   09/08 08:01

   KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan election officials said Wednesday that 
scores of additional polling stations will be closed during the Sept. 18 
parliamentary vote because of the deteriorating security situation in the 
country.

   The state electoral commission said 81 of the 458 polling stations planned 
in Nangarhar province will be shut during the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections 
"due to deteriorating security conditions." The tense eastern province 
bordering Pakistan is a center of the Taliban insurgency, with many militants 
entering the country from safe havens across the border.

   Election officials had earlier announced that more than 900 other polling 
stations would remain shut nationwide because of security concerns and that 
5,897 voting sites would be opened throughout Afghanistan. During last year's 
fraud-marred presidential vote, 6,167 voting centers nominally operated.

   The government and its foreign partners hope the elections will help 
consolidate the country's shaky democracy and political stability, allowing the 
withdrawal of the roughly 140,000 NATO-led foreign troops in the country. But 
many Afghans and international observers fear the vote could turn bloody after 
the Taliban vowed Sunday to attack polling places and warned Afghans not to 
participate in what it called a sham vote.

   The fears over election security come amid pledges by Florida-based Dove 
World Outreach Center --- a small, evangelical Christian church that espouses 
an anti-Islam philosophy --- to burn copies of the Quran to mark the Sept. 11, 
2001, attacks in the United States that provoked the Afghan war.

   The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, has warned that 
the burning of the Quran could endanger U.S. troops in the country and 
Americans worldwide.

   "If this happens, I think the first and most important reaction will be that 
wherever Americans are seen, they will be killed," Mohammad Mukhtar, a cleric 
and an election candidate for the Afghan parliament, said in Kabul. "No matter 
where they will be in the world they will be killed."

   Muslims consider the Quran to be the word of God and insist utmost respect 
be accorded to it and any printed material containing its verses or the name of 
Allah or the Prophet Muhammad. Any intentional damage or show of disrespect to 
the Quran is considered deeply offensive.

   In 2005, 15 people died and scores were wounded in riots in Afghanistan 
sparked by a story in Newsweek magazine alleging that interrogators at the U.S. 
detention center in Guantanamo Bay placed copies of the Quran in washrooms and 
flushed one down the toilet to get inmates to talk. Newsweek later retracted 
the story.

   Also Wednesday, NATO reported the death of one of its service members 
"following an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan." It did not provide 
details of the attack or the nationality of the victim.

   The presence of coalition forces and allegations of Pakistani support for 
the Taliban featured prominently in speeches at a Kabul rally to commemorate 
the ninth anniversary of the death of legendary anti-Soviet guerrilla leader 
Ahmad Shah Massoud. The ethnic Tajik commander was murdered by two al-Qaida 
members posing as journalists two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in 
the United States.

   "We thank the international community, but only Afghans, acting together 
here on the ground, can solve their own problems," said Massoud's brother, 
former Vice President Ahmad Zia Massoud.

   Massoud also accused Pakistan of continuing to support the Taliban 
insurgency and called for international pressure on Pakistan to hand over 
Taliban leaders believed to be sheltering in the country's lawless northwest 
regions.

   "The Taliban are puppets, they have no power to threaten Afghans, they are 
fighting for the interests of Pakistan," Massoud said.

   "The government says talk to the Taliban, but it would be better to talk 
with their Pakistani bosses," he said.

   Ahmad Shah Massoud remains a revered figure among ethnic Tajiks living 
mainly in the north, but widely despised by Pashtuns in the south that form the 
core of the Taliban insurgency.


(CZ)