Prosecution agreements. Laundered as much as it hundred 50 million for drug cartels. Minorly did they commit financial and technical infractions, we are talking about an organization operating at the top of the illegal narcotics pyramid. This is a major criminal enterprise. They admitted it. They did not fund it, that is on then. That is a failure of the regulatory system. They were in league with truly dangerous and violent people and the worstem out with kind of behavior that a band can be involved with. Nobody does a single day in jail . That is outrageous. It is even more outrageous when you look at in comparison with who does go to jail, people at the very bottom of the illegal sellingamid, people drugs. They go to jail for realtime, five years, 10 years. At the same time, they were living hsbc off. Taibbi sunday night. Next, a previews of todays elections. Idential they also talked about the future of u. S. afghan relations after president karzai. Posted by the alliance in support of the Afghan People, this is one hour. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming here and those of you who may be online. To very happy to be here discuss this upcoming election in four days time in afghanistan. Be election day in afghanistan. With thee seeing impressions we have and the news out of afghanistan is that there is mounting enthusiasm in the population, across the board, not just in one area or another. Even in the south and eastern parts of the country. Much more enthusiasm than fear or trepidation. The election process overall, by attacking soft targets mostly. The reaction of the Afghan People overall through afghanistan, there are many of those these days, is one of the science which to me is a very positive sign to see the Afghan People give a very strong message to the taliban. In what peoplepe are saying about the election process. They are forward to change. They are looking forward to better governance. Theyre looking forward to more rule of law. Theyre looking forward to a more unified government that couldnt deal with the challenges that afghanistan is facing. This is a country that has had a very troubled history and a country still facing many challenges on many run. Improvementamazing that we see on a daily aces and that kenneth and. Myself joinedke in the government in december 2001 and was a witness to what we inherited. It is quite clear that the glass is half over there has been german this change. Work be still a lot of done. People are looking for a government that can tackle this. Optimismmuch more since his this is an. The focus has been mostly on the u. S. And mr. Karzai. It has been mostly on one person. Now were listening to the Afghan People. This whole election process has to freelyportunity express themselves and come out and support one candidate or another. Make demands. Come out and challenge them. Tell us what to do. This is absolutely very healthy. I think the media has played an incredible role in all of this. We are also seeing a generational shift in the sense that more and more young people who have grown up during the past 13 years and are now young men and women looking forward to a new afghanistan and at an age to vote on one hand. But also their participating. This whole sense of participating and dividing your future and expressing you well are what we are seeing over the last few weeks. I think elections are going to take place unless something catastrophic or unpredictable happens over the next 72 hours or so. Which i hope it is not. But election is going to not be without challenges or problems. Let me go likely over the challenges facing elections. First, there is going to be a big turnout from all indications. The first afghan election in 2004, we saw over 70 participation which is pretty incredible. There is by all accounts a momentum building up toward that kind of figure right now of 60 to 70 probable turnout. Including many women and the Youth Participation as well. Obviously, we are also seeing long lines of people after today up to today, this moment and across afghanistan, of people who are waiting to get a voter card. Despite when he won or 22 million voter cards floating around in a country with 11 to 12 million eligible voters, there are still long lines of men and women in kabul and other cities who want to have access to a voter card which is an indication of the building up of enthusiasm among the population. There is a question of how many people do they represent. Overall, it does show a trend. That people are engaged and that there are front runners. I am not going to go and actually decipher that because it is very complex. Fraud, obviously everyone is anticipating fraud. But no one desires industrial scale fraud in afghanistan. I think that what we are looking for is an election process that can have credible results acceptable to most afghans and not leading to any type of resulting in any type of crisis. There may be some people the satisfied. Apparently that is the norm with elections. There will be some people who are unhappy with the results. The desire is for all candidates to at some point come to terms about with the results and the anticipation is for the election process and institutions to play their role according to the laws and regulations of the country. The burden of proof and the responsibility lies on the shoulders of the election institutions. The they have a responsibility to make sure that the results of this election are as fraudfree as possible. I just want to spend one moment by telling you what in my view would define and constitute a successful election. Versus a failed election. First of all i think that barring any surprises between now and election day, the level of turnout is going to be very critical. The larger the turnout am a the better it is for elections. The better the Afghan Security forces plus International Forces can contain the attacks and trying to disrupt the election process, obviously the better results we will get. The Afghan Forces have tried and at a very good job so far of containing and of repulsing the taliban attacks. Just this morning there was a very interesting piece of news that said the taliban suicide bomber detonated his explosives within a taliban leadership meeting, killing 26 leaders who were appearing for major attacks. This person was either dissatisfied or something happened. I do not know any details but it does show that on one hand they are planning heavily and on the other hand there is within the taliban some tension and people who want to disagree with what they do. What else can make this election successful, there is the issue of fraud is the issue of fraud as a mentioned. The more we can mitigate fraud, the more we can control fraud. And the more credible results. What would make results credible and acceptable to the Afghan People and what would make credible results to the International Community who is on standby keeping a low profile. That is also going to be very important. At the end of the day i think that if these elections can result in better governance, a leadership that is more unified and further unified the country and can deal with the challenges facing the country, including restoring relationships with the National Community and the u. S. In particular. Signing the bsa and keep following up on the promises made at the summit in chicago and tokyo and in bonn. The relationship that afghanistan will have with the International Community. I think that these are if we can have a good election, these are the results that we will see over the next year with the new government. The reverse of all of this of course is going to probably result in failure of elections or postponement of elections or delay in the results coming out of elections and probably in a crisis. I do not personally see afghanistan entering a conflict situation. I do not see civil war erupting. I do see local a political crisis in case large constituencies of afghans arent happy with the results of elections. But all indications today. 2 relatively successful election happening on april 5. Most probably moving to a second round if nobody gets the 50 plus one required by the constitution. And also most horribly and i will and on this note. There would be many attempts made, many backdoor, backroom deals made over postround one to come up with a consensus on election leadership. Meaning that there will be attempts made by the lead candidates to reform the government with National Unity act russian government that could strengthen the pillars of governance in the future. I will stop here and hopefully youll have questions later. I will turn the floor to mr. Hadley. Good morning. I want to talk about three things. Election monitors, i want to talk about what we can hope for out of this electoral process and i am worried about how we are how we got to where we are. First, the issue of International Election observers. There is obviously been some recent violence. It has caused some of the International Organizations who plan to send lection observers not to do so. There has been suggestions in some media reports that this is a real blow to the credibility of the elections and i think that is a misunderstanding of the situation. It is true that the National Democratic institute and Democracy International have scaled back their observer missions. And that is a blow. Andy i was going to provide about 120 of what was expected to be two hundred International Observers from five organizations. That said, there still will be International Observers on the ground. Democracy International Still has a specialized longterm observers that are in the country and will remain in the country. The European Union and the osce also have observers that will be present. The numbers will not be great, but that is not unusual. Pakistan recently had an election which was widely viewed as successful. It is a country of 180 million. There were only i am told 60 International Election observers at that election. Afghanistan is a country of about 30 million people, proportionately, it will have more International Elections election observers. But more importantly, the International Observers will be working with approximately 15,000 National Afghan observers. Deployed around the country by two afghan observation groups, the largest one is the free and Fair Election foundation which was founded in 2004 and has observed every afghan election since. They currently have 10,000 observers registered. The afghan observers have been trained and funded by the International Community. They will be the real eyes and ears on the ground and they will be sharing the information and their observations with the International Observers. And will be part of the foundation for the conclusions that the International Observers will separately reach on the elections. In addition, each of the major candidates has their own election observers so this is going to be tens of thousands more. And finally the afghan media has gained significant capacity for recent years as many of you well now. They will be following the elections as they have been following the campaign. The most critical part of the electoral process is the tabulation of the result. The inserting of the vote counts from each of the polling stations into the central computer system. That will take place at the independent Election Commission headquarters in kabul and it will be observed by the International Technical teams as well as afghan observers. The absence of the International Observers or what i should say is a drawdown in the number of International Observers that will be present. We will have a psychological effect and it will have an impact on the international how the international trinity views it. I am not trying to gloss over that fact. The truth is it is not going to make a huge difference. There are enough International Observers there to do their job and the real story here is this is an afghan election. Being undertaken pursuant to afghan institutions. And afghan observers are going to be the firstline of defense in ensuring a good election. Second, good election. Obviously we would all like the process to be as free and fair and without fraud. Elections are hard to run. We have been added 200 years in our country and we still generate a fairmont of controversy. We cannot have too high a standard here for days afghan elections. The bottom line is going to be whether the elections process gives a result. That a broad and representative segment of the Afghan People believes to be credible. Part of that will be the electoral process. And how much fraud people feel is there. But the real question is whether this electoral process, flog though it will be, will produce a legitimate outcome. An outcome accepted by the Afghan People as legitimate and will produce a government that the Afghan People will support, for which the Afghan Security forces will fight and with which hopefully at least some of the taliban will be willing to negotiate. I think for the comments that the ambassador made, there is a pretty good chance that this process will produce that kind of outcome. Finally and then i will turn it over to michelle. Lets not forget our fertile we have come. Two years ago there was a lot of discussion about the political transition that we are now in the midst of. You are may remember all the speculation at that time. There will not be an election because karzai does not want one. He wants to stay in power after 2014. The election law will not be signed. The independent Electoral Commission will not be fleshed out, will not be ready to operate. The people will not be engaged. They will not they will not be crippled candidates. A lot of skepticism and whether violence would make the election possible really at all. We can all agree that we are at a place, much better place than most of us would have expected two years ago. And we may actually have a pleasant surprise here sunday and monday. Thank you. I want to make three quick points before we open it it up to questions. Just to reinforce what has been said about how we judge the outcome. I come at this from a u. S. Policy perspective. What kind of outcome should we be looking for and i do think it has already been said. The key issue is does this election process writ large ultimately result in a government that is seen as credible and legitimate in the eyes of the Afghan People. There may well be some fraud, there may be some violent. We hope not. At the end of the day when all is said and done, do the Afghan People feel that this is a credible and legitimate outcome. If the answer is yes, that should have a number of implications for u. S. Policy but i think we should not judge the afghan elections by the same standards that we judge our own elections. We have had 200 years of democratic evolution. This is a democracy in its infancy. If this election does produce a credible result it will be the first peaceful handoff of power in afghanistan history. We want to be careful not to rush to judgment ahead of the Afghan People. It is their judgment to make whether the ultimate outcome is legitimate and credible. I do not think we want to be secondguessing that issue at every step along the way. I think it is very important to let this process play out. The other thing that is clear is u. S. Officials from a western officials from many isaf countries have had multiple discussions with all of the candidates. I think they have had a very clear message. There are a lot of stakes involved here. If the election outcome is legitimate and credible. Afghanistan can expect the International Community to actually follow up on its lenses of its continued assistance and that assistance is critical to the ultimate success of the next Afghan Government. By contrast, there is rampant fraud. There is a failure to negotiate the representative outcome, etc. You could see the political report in the United States and other countries for continuing to provide assistance to afghanistan. You can see that support plummet. There are s that would put whatever government ultimately resulted in a crisis situation and fighting for its arrival. And so i think we have been very clear about the stakes involved. I think all of the candidates understand that and hopefully, that will influence their choices and how they approach this contest. My second key point is that the results of this election will move us into a postkarzai time of u. S. Afghan relations. It will be a very important turning of the page. It will be the start of a new chapter in our relationship. One where i hope we can get beyond focusing so much on one personality and the challenging aspects of that personality. To a relationship that is based on a number of profoundly shared Strategic Interests, strategic objectives and so forth. I think if we do get a legitimate outcome, there will be a lot of there will be a positive opportunity to not start fresh because we obviously have a lot of engagement and history with afghanistan but in the chapter that i think we can rejuvenate the