Today's guest is Peter Dimitroff, the Director of the National Democratic Institute.

He will talk to you about candidate training priorities now that the candidate nomination process has come to an end. These training priorities include campaign skills training for party and independent candidates, basic and advanced media training, and candidate agent training.

•  DDR well over 57,000 mark

Over 57,000 former Afghan Military Forces (AMF) officers and soldiers have joined the Disarmament Demobilization Reintegration (DDR) programme. As of this morning 57,424 have handed in their weapons by disarming. From that figure 48,072 have entered the reintegration phase.

The disarmament programme is progressing well, especially in the region of Bamyan. Afghanistan 's New Beginnings Programme (ANBP) anticipates completing the disarmament programme by the end of June 2005.

In terms of heavy weapons, 9,085 working or repairable heavy weapons have been collected and placed in secure compounds throughout the country.

Yesterday (May 28 th ) a graduation ceremony was held in the Teacher Training Institute to distribute certificates to 37 former officers and soldiers who selected the teacher training package option provided by ANBP.

The ceremony was attended by officials from the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Education, the Director of the Teacher Training Centre, and ANBP.

•  MoWA workshop at Ministry of Water and Energy seeks to improve women's issues

The Ministry of Women's Affairs will be holding a planning workshop from 9:30am to 3pm tomorrow - May 30 th - at the Ministry of Water and Energy.

Fifty to seventy senior officials from the Ministry of Water and Energy and its attached agencies are expected to attend and discuss ways in which the Ministry can improve its policies and programs to benefit women.

This workshop is being conducted with the technical support of United Nations Women's Fund (UNIFEM).

•  Provincial governments receive environment training

A one-week training workshop aimed at raising awareness of environmental protection has just concluded in Heart for provincial government staff.

The seminar, which was organized by the NGO Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), focused on environmental management in agriculture as well as water and soil conservation. The seminar was attended by 16 officials from the Departments of Agriculture and Irrigation in the four western provinces.

•  Bamyan governor signs ten-year provincial strategic plan

The Bamyan provincial governor signed on Wednesday a ten-year Provincial Strategic Plan for the overall development of Bamyan Province .

The plan, the first long term strategic development initiative of its kind, is the culmination of a year's worth of work with provincial and district government authorities, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and UN agencies active in the province.

It aims to guide various government and international actors in their programming and funding decisions and reflects both Afghanistan 's National Development Programme and the National Priority Programme. Policy areas for development include: infrastructure: security; tourism; agriculture and irrigation; education; and health. The plan will now be disseminated widely to the donor community, international agencies, local government and ministries in Kabul .

•  International Day of UN Peacekeepers

Today, May 29 th , is International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers.

Each year on this day we honour the sacrifice of the UN peacekeepers, who have laid down their lives in the service of peace.

During 2004, 115 colleagues were killed, and already in 2005, 30 have made the ultimate sacrifice. We pay tribute to each and every one of our fallen colleagues.

In his annual message, the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said:

“ Today, more than 66,000 uniformed personnel and almost 15,000 civilians are serving the cause of peace in 17 peacekeeping operations around the globe. They are maintaining ceasefires and monitoring borders, disarming former combatants, fostering reconciliation, facilitating the delivery of humanitarian assistance, helping refugees and displaced persons to return home, and ensuring conditions for democratic elections, the rule of law, reconstruction and economic recovery”.

He also added:

“UN peacekeepers work every day to give practical meaning to the words of the United Nations Charter, that is, ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war'. On this day, we honour all who have served, and serve today, in the front lines of peace”.

•  Upcoming press conferences: JEMB, Electoral Complaints Commission, and UNODC Executive Director

We have a trio of important press conferences to announce.

One is happening this afternoon at 2pm . The Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) is inviting the media to their complex on Jalalabad Road . They will be making a final announcement on candidate nomination figures.

Secondly, the newly-appointed Electoral Complaints Commission will be holding their inaugural press conference on Tuesday May 31 st to introduce themselves and outline the work they will be doing.

All five commissioners will be present and available to answer your questions. The event is being held at the Heetal Plaza Hotel in Wazir Akbar Khan, at 2pm .

The other press conference will be held in this room on Wednesday June 1 st at 2pm . Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), will be making another visit to Kabul and will talk about the status of the drug eradication campaign, developments on alternative livelihood activities and crime prevention methods.

Questions & Answers

Question: Do you have any updates on the kidnapping of Clementina?

Senior Public Information Officer: Every effort is being made by UNAMA to support the investigation. We are not in charge of the investigation and this question should be directed to the Ministry of Interior or the Italian Embassy. The ministry is in charge of the investigation.

Question: What kind of support are you providing for the government (on the kidnapping)?

Senior Public Information Officer: Whatever we - as UNAMA - can provide in terms of information, but there again we are not talking about something that is of direct relevance to UNAMA. Bear in mind the UN is not investigating and we are not in charge. But we are ready to provide our full support.

Question: Can you update us on the business in Nangarhar? Has it returned to normal in terms of staff? [in relation to the recent demonstrations and relocation of UN staff].

Senior Public Information Officer: We already have some staff, which went back to Nangarhar and Jalalabad. We are still reviewing the security situation and considering sending the rest of our staff.

Peter Dimitroff, Country Director of National Democratic Institute (NDI)

My name is Peter Dimitroff and I am the country director for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Afghanistan . I would like to talk about the programmes that the NDI is offering as we head into the parliamentary elections.

At this point in time, now that we have had the end of the candidate nomination period last week, many of the candidates and campaign teams are starting to think about the campaign itself and hitting the campaign trail. We have been here since 2002 supporting political parties and independent candidates and we will continue to do so through our training centre here in Kabul and our eight regional training centres located throughout Afghanistan .

Our support to political party candidates and independent candidates takes several forms including campaign skills training, the basics of what kind of campaign team you need and what skills you have to develop to successfully contest these parliamentary elections. We have separate stand-alone programmes for women, which build up their campaign skills and personal skills in order to be able to compete in this environment. We also offer two types of media training: one is a basic media training for candidates and their teams at the regional level; the other is an advanced media training, which aims to deal with the communications directors in the large national parties.

At the same time we also have a candidate agent training programme which will kick in, in August and September and which deals with the fact that candidates, both independent and party candidates, can field agents of their own to scrutinize the voting and counting procedures on the day of the election. This requires some training as you can imagine.

In terms of our support to the larger elections process, what we do with candidates and political parties helps with the elections process. But there is one specific programme that I want to focus on this morning, which we are doing in connection with the JEMB – this is the Code of Conduct, which all independent and political party candidates must have signed as they go through the nomination process. I will now hand you over to my colleague, Kit Spence, who will tell you some more about the code of conduct.

Kit Spence, NDI Political Party Training Expert

The Code of Conduct is fundamental to the good operation of this election. It involves many parties. The candidates and political parties have to sign the Code of Conduct, but there are other actors that are involved in the whole process, not the least of which is the JEMB and the polling officials that have to understand what the rights of the candidates are. These include the national governments through its local administrative structures, and the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police, which also have a responsibility to help ensure that the election campaign goes as well as it possibly can.

We just closed the nomination period so it is an optimum time for us to start to educate the parties and candidates about what their rights are under the Code of Conduct and what their responsibilities are. In order to do that we are meeting directly with political parties and candidates, and leading round table discussions in our regional training centres and here in Kabul .

In conjunction with the JEMB we will also hold a national conference trying to involve all of the actors including the JEMB, the government and the parties. Another key actor in this is the media, which has a responsibility to maintain the code of conduct and reveal any discrepancies or lack of adherence to the code.

The key player in all of this is going to be the Election Complaints Commission, and we are working closely with Mr. Kippen who is the former national director with NDI [in Afghanistan ] and is well known amongst the political parties and the various agencies that are responsible. We are working with the Electoral Complaints Commission to ensure that the parties understand what the adjudication process is.

Lastly let me introduce our Senior Programme Manager Mr. Musa Mahmodi.

Mohammad Musa Mahmodi, NDI Senior Programme Manager

I am the former director of the central region for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). I will be in charge of political party development within NDI and if you have any need for any information, I am at your service.

Questions & Answers

Question: In Afghanistan , how much is NDI Afghan-owned? How many Afghans are directly involved in the decision-making process?

Peter Dimitroff: NDI does have offices throughout the world. Our main funder is USAID (US Agency for International Development), however fortunately here in Afghanistan we also are supported by the British and Dutch governments. When I first arrived here in November to take over from Grant Kippen, I was pleasantly surprised to see the composition of NDI. We only have three internationals working at NDI here in Afghanistan - and two of them are right here - and we have 140 Afghans working both here at the headquarters in Kabul and throughout our regional training centres. That ratio is, first of all, excellent in terms of developing our own staff and developing a legacy for NDI's presence here, but it also helps us in our mission because, as everyone knows, politics is about knowing your community, and knowing what the needs and the wants are of local people. And certainly it would not be sufficient for myself or Kit Spence to come and attempt a broad political party development programme without actually drawing on the wisdom and experience of our Afghan colleagues. I am very pleased with the way that we have structured ourselves here in Afghanistan .

Question: Some of the candidates cannot afford to go ahead with the expenses involved in a campaign, particularly in some provinces. Financially, are there any mechanisms or training to help these candidates?

Peter Dimitroff: With respect to the mandatory nature of NDI training here, certainly we cannot force the parties or independent candidates to come to our doorstep, however I think over the last two years we have built a reputation of not only providing necessary training as parties and candidates develop their skills, but I think very practical ones. Time is too short and there is too much to do for us to waste time on theory or on issues that may not be of practical, immediate importance to our candidates. And this will only increase. We are at a point now where we are dealing with candidates who have taken the very courageous step of nominating themselves as candidates, they have invested time and money and so we have to provide them with a product which will help them be successful in these elections.

Let me just address one more issue with regards to resources, which is extremely important. Both men and women candidates are going to face resource challenges as they enter this election. Although these are local elections, the unit is the province, which can be in some cases very large. As you point out women face particular challenges. Challenges to mobility. Challenges to access to financial resources and access to wider social networks within the province. The election law forbids us to directly fund candidates' campaigns – in other words to help out with transportation. However, we think that the single most valuable thing they can receive from us is the training and knowledge that they need to make their actions during the campaign as efficient and as effective as possible. One good example of some imagination that we can use is we are certainly exploring ways with the new media commission that is being set up within JEMB to provide a certain amount of free media time for independent and party candidates. Now this will not be an adequate substitute for all of the financial challenges candidates face, but certainly from experience media advertisement is one of the largest single cost drivers within a campaign. However we also think that to be a credible candidate you must have done a certain amount of fund raising and enjoy a certain amount of support from the community. And although we realize that Afghanistan does not have the economic situation in which candidates can draw large amounts of funding for their campaigns from ordinary citizens, they should be able to get the minimum they need to travel and campaign effectively. One of the themes in our training is that local elections do not have to be expensive. They are expensive in time, and are expensive in volunteers but not in money. And so that is certainly something that we have tried to push these candidates as they approach this election campaign.

Question: How do candidates know that NDI exists?

Mohammad Musa Mahmodi: As you know we have established ETIC's (Election Training and Information Centre) around the country. Also we are going to deliver this training to their districts and their provinces which are in one of the ETIC's in each region. So it will ease the accessibility of the candidates and political parties through all the training and all the regions within the country.

* *** *