Envoy to Afghanistan Calls for Troops

More NATO troops are urgently needed to secure Afghanistan ahead of September elections, the top U.N. envoy in the country said Monday after militants attacked a voter registration office near the capital.

Assailants also killed one Afghan soldier and injured a second in a force that had been deployed to protect election workers in the southern province of Kandahar.

Jean Arnault said that a wave of violence -- including recent deadly attacks on foreigners and relief workers -- showed increased “volatility” ahead of the polls, and said “the time is now” for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to boost its presence.

“The events of the past three weeks have demonstrated that security is not improving. If anything, it has become more volatile,” he told a news conference in Kabul.

Early Monday, attackers fired three rocket-propelled grenades at the registration office in the main town of Lowgar province, about 35 miles south of Kabul, damaging the building but hurting no one.

Gen. Atiqullah Ludin, the provincial commander, blamed rebels of the former Taliban regime and warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who have vowed to sabotage the vote -- seen as key to rehabilitating a country shattered by war.

Arnault expressed concern over an attack so close to the 6,000 NATO-led peacekeepers in the capital.

“We are now facing attacks directed at us with fairly heavy weapons,” he said.

NATO has promised for months to deploy more forces across the north of the country, but nations have been slow to commit troops. NATO leaders are due to discuss the issue at a June 28-29 summit in Turkey.

Security concerns have deepened this month, with the slaying of 11 Chinese road workers and five aid workers, three of them Europeans, in northern provinces once regarded as relatively stable.

Meanwhile, electoral teams have come under repeated attack in the south and east, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda rebels are strongest, leaving two British U.N. contractors dead in May and several Afghans wounded.

On Monday, assailants on two motorbikes sprayed a vehicle carrying two Afghan soldiers, killing one and wounding the other, as they traveled to an election office in Arghandab district, about 20 miles north of Kandahar city.

“The soldiers were our security guards,” said Shoaib, a regional election coordinator who like many Afghans goes by one name. “But this act won’t stop the registration program.”

The U.S. military, which has 20,000 troops hunting insurgents in the south and east, gave a more upbeat assessment of the security situation.

Spokesman Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager said Monday that allegations of deteriorating security “fly in the face of the successes we are seeing in voter registration.”

So far, just over 4 million people have signed up -- less than half the estimated number of eligible voters.

Arnault said there was public determination to take part in the election and he hoped that 8 million to 10 million would sign up by the end of July.