Summary Hamid Karzai said Friday that he would stand down at the end of his second term in 2014.
Afghanistan s President Hamid Karzai said Friday that he would stand down at the end of his second term in 2014 and allow a successor to be freely elected.
"The greatest of my achievements eventually, seen by the Afghan people, will be a proper, well-organized, interference-free election in which the Afghan people can elect their next president," he said.
"And certainly I will be a retired president, and very happily a retired president," he vowed, in response to a question about the 2014 vote at a joint White House press conference with US President Barack Obama.
Karzai was elected in 2004 and re-elected in 2009, in two votes marred by allegations of widespread electoral fraud and held against the backdrop of an ongoing war between NATO-backed government forces and Taliban guerrillas.
