An embrace and a handshake: how John Kerry brokered peace between Afghan rivals --- (Reuters) - It was late on Saturday evening in a fourth-floor room of the U.S. ambassador's residence in Kabul that the election crisis in Afghanistan that had threatened to divide the nation was staved off. -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was in the room with former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, one of the two warring presidential candidates. -- The door was opened to Abdullah's rival and bitter foe Ashraf Ghani. -- Ending months of bitter squabbling, Ghani walked arms wide open toward Abdullah, embracing him warmly and shaking his hand, according to a U.S. official who was present. -- A few hours later the two candidates announced they had agreed to a full recount of the disputed June 14 vote, meaning there would be a delay in the Aug 2 inauguration of a new president to replace Hamid Karzai, who was installed in office by the United States after the ouster of the hardline Islamic Taliban regime in 2002. -- It took Kerry a marathon 44 hours of "intensive" and "emotional" talks to broker a deal between the two candidates, whose rupture had threatened to divide Afghanistan along ethnic lines, said several U.S. and Afghan officials who were involved in the process. -- With the bulk of U.S. forces scheduled to withdraw from the war-torn nation this year, the row over the election and the possibility of violence has rekindled fears of a civil war and the prospect that the Taliban would take control again. -- Preliminary results from the run-off vote in June put Ghani, a former World Bank official, well ahead but Abdullah rejected the result, claiming widespread fraud and calling the outcome a "coup" against the Afghan people. -- Abdullah's support is mainly in the north, among the Tajik minority, while Ghani is supported by Pashtun tribes in the east and south. Tensions had soared earlier in the week when Abdullah's supporters threatened to form a parallel government after preliminary results from the vote were announced. - More, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/13/us-afghanistan-election-kerry-idUSKBN0FI0RA20140713