UN names acting deputy to mission in Afghanistan

Oct 22, 2009, 21:00 GMT

New York - The United Nations has dispatched a peacekeeping official to serve temporarily in its mission in Afghanistan, which is preparing a crucial second round of presidential voting, a UN spokesperson said Thursday.

Wolfgang Weisbrod-Weber, a German diplomat, will serve as acting deputy to Kei Eide, the UN special envoy for Afghanistan, in the coming two months.

Eide's former deputy, US diplomat Peter Galbraith, was fired after he openly disagreed with the UN handling of the first round of vote on August 20. The run-off election will take place on November 7 after President Hamid Karzai failed to get 50 per cent of the votes. He will face his opponent, the next largest vote-getter, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.

'In this critical period of electoral process, the secretary general (Ban Ki-moon) has decided to temporarily dispatch Weisbrod-Weber to Afghanistan to work with Kai Eide as the deputy special representative for political affairs, ad interim,' Marie Okabe said.

Weisbrod-Weber is director of the Asia and Middle East division in the department of peacekeeping at UN headquarters in New York.