By ALISSA J. RUBIN
KABUL, Afghanistan — Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, delivered an extraordinarily harsh criticism Thursday of the Western governments fighting in his country, the United Nations and the Anglo-American press, accusing them them of perpetrating the fraud that denied him an outright victory in last summer’s presidential elections.
He said they risked being seen as invaders rather than saviors of the country after eight years of war against the Taliban.
In a 50-minute speech given at the Independent High Election Commission, which oversaw the presidential election, and later broadcast on national television, Mr. Karzai used nationalist rhetoric and accusations of conspiracy against him and his country just two days after President Barack Obama had come for his first visit as president.
The speech seemed more a measure of Mr. Karzai’s mood in the wake of Mr. Obama’s visit, in which Mr. Obama rebuked the Afghan’s president for his failure to reform election rules and crack down on corruption. At points in the speech, Mr. Karzai used inflammatory language about the West.
“There is no doubt that the fraud was very widespread, but this fraud was not committed by Afghans, it was committed by foreigners. This fraud was committed by Galbraith, this fraud was committed by Morillon and this fraud was committed by embassies,” said Mr. Karzai. He was referring to Peter Galbraith, the deputy United Nations special representative to Afghanistan at the time of the election and the person who helped reveal the fraud, and Philippe Morillon, the chief election observer for the European Union.
Later in the speech he accused the Western coalition fighting here to shore up his government of being on the verge of becoming invaders—a term usually used by insurgents when they refer the American, British and other NATO troops. And, if they came to be seen as that they would be encouraging the insurgency, he said.
“In this situation there is a thin curtain between invasion and cooperation-assistance,” said Mr. Karzai, adding that if the perception spread of the west being invaders and the Afghan government being their mercenaries, the insurgency “could become a national resistance.”
Compounding his anger was a political defeat in the lower house of Parliament on Wednesday when his revision of the election law was rejected. Under the revised version the United Nations would have little input over the Election Complaints Commission, the agency that investigates election irregularities.
The American Embassy and the United Nations Mission in Kabul had no comment on Mr. Karzai’s speech. Both are involved in trying to persuade Mr. Karzai to make election reforms that better safeguard against a repeat of the fraud since without them western countries are unlikely to want to help pay for the parliamentary elections scheduled for September. While negotiations are ongoing, diplomats have said privately that they would rather not discuss the latest developments.
Contacted afterward, Mr. Galbraith ridiculed Mr. Karzai, calling his speech “so absurd that I considered it an April Fools day joke.” He also said Mr. Karzai’s speech “underscores how totally unreliable this guy is as an ally.”
Mr. Morillon of the European Union could not immediately be reached.
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