Volume No. 4174 Tuesday May 21, 2019 Sawr 31, 1398 www.outlookafghanistan.net Price: 20/-Afs

Quote of the Day

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the

source of all true art and science.Albert Einstein

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Experience

Atmar says the government it is trying to postpone peace until elections to earn another five years.

Afghanistan’s IEC on Monday rejected the UN proposal of delaying the provincial councils and Ghazni parliamentary elections.

NEW DELHI - Former West In-dies allrounder Phil Simmons will step down from his position as Afghanistan coach after the end of the ICC men’s World Cup.Simmons, who took over the po-sition in December 2017, said he has achieved his target of taking Afghanistan to the World Cup and the time is ripe for him to leave.“I have thought about it and I have actually given the ACB my notice that I will not be renew-ing my contract. I will move on to something different once my contract expires on July 15,” Sim-mons told ESPNcricinfo.Simmons’ contract with Afghani-stan Cricket Board (ACB) runs until the end of the World Cup and he might have been given an extension given Afghanistan’s rise under his guidance.“I signed up originally for 18 months and I think I have done a lot in this period. It is time for me to move on to something else now. To want to get to the World Cup - that was ACB’s goal at the time they appointed me,” Sim-mons said.“My goal is always to leave things better than when I joined: the way we practice, the way we think about the game, the way we assess other teams.I’ve tried to help the players in all those areas,” added the 56-year-old, under whom Afghanistan won the World Cup Qualifier last March.Last month, ACB had controver-sially appointed Gulbadin Naib as ODI captain in place of Asghar Afghan, who had a four-year captaincy stint across all formats.The decision was slammed by top players such as Rashid Khan and Mohammad Nabi.The board also named Rahmat Shah and Rashid as skippers for the Test and T20I teams respec-tively.Simmons said he had no clue about the decisions and he was not consulted before making those changes.“No, I was not aware of it. I was not given any reasons. It was the decision of the Afghanistan Cricket Board and the selectors,” Simmons said.“How can I take it? I can’t change it. So I have to just get on with what I have to do and make sure the squad is preparing in the same ...(More on P4)...(4)

Afghanistan Coach Phil Simmons to Quit After ICC World Cup 2019

Atmar Offers President Ghani to Head a Caretaker Govt

KABUL - UN insists on holding the timely presidential elections.According to a tweet, Tadamichi Yama-moto, UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, said that “Critically important that credible Afghanistan Presidential elections take place on time this year.”He further added that “The UN’s tech-nical advice is that with only 4 months remaining to 28 Sept Presidential Elec-tion day there is a need for realism and urgent focus among all actors in the Af-

IEC Rejects UN Proposal for Upcoming Elections

ghan election process.”However, Mr. Yamamoto stressed the independence of IEC regarding making decisions about the elections.“The IEC decides on how many elec-tions to hold. The UN provides techni-cal guidance to it and respects its deci-sions, “said Mr. Yamamoto.In addition, onn May 12, Alice Wells, the U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs visited Kabul where she met with the IEC officials to discuss the

ongoing preparations for the upcoming presidential elections in Afghanistan.The U.S. top diplomat recommended IEC officials to focus on the presidential elections on September 28. In addition, she urged electoral bodies to postpone the other two elections.However, the IEC Chief Hawa Alam Nuristani has said that the provincial council elections should be held as scheduled in order to legitimatize the presidential election.“In order to ensure overall, transparent, and legal presidential elections, there is a need to hold the provincial council elections as well,” said Ms. Nuristani.At the same time, some presidential candidates insist that IEC has not the capacity of holding three elections at the same time.The elections watch institutions, knows the suggestion made by U.S. Deputy of Foreign Affairs Ministry as an interven-tion in the work of IEC.Yousuf Rashid, CEO of the Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan, said, “ the suggestion could be pro-posed by ...(More on P4)...(5)

KABUL - Continued focus and effort are essen-tial for building on the progress made in imple-menting Afghanistan’s anti-corruption strat-egy, finds a new United Nations report released today.“Fighting corruption remains a truly fundamen-tal necessity in Afghanistan,” said Tadamichi Yamamoto, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan. “The United Nations welcomes the progress Afghanistan has made, but all ...(More on P4)...(2)

KABUL - For years, the Kabul landscape has been undergoing increasing transformation.New high-rise apartment buildings, where rents can top out at $1,000 a month, restaurants and wedding halls jostle for space as efforts to make the city more green result in more trees and flow-ers on pavements and traffic dividers.But the biggest change is still taking hold, one that harks back to the city’s peaceful past. Scores of Af-ghans are busily ...(More on P4)...(3)

MAZAR-I-SHARIF - The Afghanistan Independ-ent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) in northern Balkh province says the people want honourable and durable peace in the country.This was stated during the launch of a campaign to collect written viewpoints from around 200 civil society organisations, university teachers, women rights activists and students in northern Balkh province.Jamshid Fardi, head of the Afghan Pohyal Foun-dation (APF) who launched the campaign, said the process of collecting written viewpoints re-garding the peace process would be implemented in other parts of the country as well.He said the presence and position of Afghans had not been clarified in peace process and some cir-cles made themselves part of it, using an artificial public mandate.Fardi continued the difference between their ef-fort and peace conferences would be ascertaining the views of ulema, ...(More on P4)...(6)

UN Stresses on Persistent Anti-Corruption

Efforts in Afghanistan

Opinion Divided as War-Scarred Kabul

Palace Restored

People Want Peace with Dignity: AIHRC

KABUL - President Ashraf Ghani’s former National Security Advisor and a leading presidential candidate Mo-hammad Hanif Atmar at a gathering on Monday called the continuation of the incumbent government “ille-gitimate” and made some offers to the head of the state.Addressing a group of presidential candidates, Atmar said the nation and the candidates are awaiting President Ghani’s decision after May 22 which he said is the end of the National Uni-ty Government’s term according to the

Constitution.Atmar said the country will face a cri-sis if the incumbent government con-tinued its term after May 22.He reiterated that Ghani’s term has ended and the continuation of his term will create a crisis in the country and the president will be held responsible for that.Atmar offered President Ghani to be head of a caretaker government but quit from his candidacy in the upcom-ing elections.“We want that a caretaker government

should be established, we want that if he (President Ghani) he should quit from his candidacy if he wants to con-tinue his tenure and he should form a national collective for monitoring the elections. If it is not possible, we will go for the second option which is obvi-ous who will be its caretaker,” he said.“If he (President Ghani) does not re-spect the two options, we have the third option. We will continue politi-cal pressure by bringing the nation and the political forces together,” he said.He mentioned ...(More on P4)...(1)