Afghan election contenders in last-ditch bid to rescue power-sharing deal --- (Reuters) - Afghanistan's rival presidential campaigns were holding last-ditch talks on Wednesday to rescue a deal on a national government after a disputed election raised fears of exacerbating ethnic divisions. -- Presidential contender Abdullah Abdullah extended a Tuesday deadline to disengage from the political process to allow international efforts to salvage the U.S-brokered deal under which the two sides also agreed to accept the results of a U.N.-supervised vote audit, his camp said. -- But on Wednesday, the Abdullah camp said the United States had launched a new effort to rescue the accord brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry to give the losing side a share of power and stop Afghanistan from a return to the sort of ethnic animosity seen during a civil war in the 1990s. -- "Talks are underway, we are optimistic," said Mahmoud Saiqal, a top aide to Abdullah. A new four-member committee from the two camps has been set up to find common ground on the role of a chief executive to share powers with the president. -- Abdullah and Ghani, a former finance minister, also met President Hamid Karzai who has been pushing for an early transition to a successor in what will be Afghanistan's first democratic transfer of power, Mujib Rahimi, a spokesman for Abdullah said. -- The moves came after the Abdullah campaign said it would pull out of the process if its demands were not met by Tuesday and a powerful northern ally, Atta Mohammad Noor, threatened to launch mass protests which he called a "green and orange" movement. -- His spokesman Munir Farhad said green denoted peaceful street protests that would culminate in taking over government buildings in a parallel to the orange revolution in Ukraine. - More, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/03/us-afghanistan-election-idUSKBN0GY18O20140903