Viddler

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Hello, everybody. Before I discuss the meeting that I've just had with Prime Minister Maliki I just want to make a brief statement about Afghanistan.

I had the opportunity to speak with President Karzai this morning and I wanted to congratulate him on accepting the certification of the recent election. As we all know, this has been a very difficult time in Afghanistan to not only carry out a election under difficult circumstances, where there were a whole host of security issues that had to be resolved, but also post-election a lot of uncertainty.

President Karzai, as well as the other candidates, I think have shown that they have the interest of the Afghan people at heart, that this is a reflection of a commitment to rule of law, and an insistence that the Afghan people's will should be done. And so I expressed the American people's appreciation for this step.

As I mentioned before, this has been a difficult election. You have violent forces opposed to democracy in Afghanistan. And yet despite these very difficult conditions what we've seen is elections take place; we have now seen the IEC and the ECC in Afghanistan complete their work; we have seen the candidates expressing a willingness to abide by constitutional law, and there is a path forward in order to complete this election process.

I want to give particular thanks to Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and his team, who have been working tirelessly throughout this process. I also want to commend Senator John Kerry, who was in the region traveling and ended up working extensively with Ambassador Eikenberry and was extraordinarily constructive and very helpful. So I think he deserves great congratulations.

Moving forward, we will continue to work with our ISAF partners as well as the Afghan government, however this election turns out, to ensure that we can move the Afghan -- that we can move Afghanistan towards peace and security and prosperity and that the wil