Ashdown blames Afghan politics for UN envoy veto

"President Karzai, a man whom I respect and I wish him well and I wish his government well, is a politician," the former British political party leader and international envoy to Bosnia-Hercegovina, told BBC television. --- "He's lining up, hopefully, as he would see it, to win the presidential elections likely to be in 2009. --- "I suppose he must have calculated that beating up on Britain -- an ex-imperial power -- beating up on the United States, was not going to do him any harm in a proud Afghanistan amongst the (ethnic) Pashtun vote."