WASHINGTON, Aug 2 (AFP) - US President George W. Bush said Monday that an overwhelming response to voters' registration in Afghanistan ahead of landmark polls showed Afghans were not intimidated by violence sparked by militants.
"Nine million people have said to the world, 'we love freedom and we're going to vote'," Bush said. "That's an unbelievable statement, isn't it?" he said at a press conference at the White House.
Bush was responding to a question on the deteriorating security situation in insurgency-wracked Afghanistan, from where prominent aid agency Doctors Without Borders announced its pullout last week.
The aid group blamed the Afghanistan government for increasingly fragile security ahead of the country's first presidential elections in October.
Five of its workers were killed in a targeted attack in the northwestern Afghan province of Badghis on June 2, an area previously considered safe.
Bush said Monday that he regretted the decision by Doctors without Border since the group had provided an "important function for the people who want to live in a free society."
But he hastened to add that Afghans were now responding positively to voters' registering exercises, an indication that they were not intimidated by militants.
At one time, he recollected, authorities were concerned they might not even succeed in getting three million registered voters, because of the security situation.
Bush said the United States would help Afghanistan bring remnants of the ousted Taliban militant regime to justice.
"These are similar to the killers in Iraq. They'll lurk in shadows and come out and kill indiscriminately," he said, citing a recent incident where Taliban militants dragged passengers from a bus and killed them because they had registered to vote.
"Nevertheless, the Afghan people refused to be intimidated. They're showing up in droves to vote. A free society is emerging in that part of the world," Bush said.
Since December, some 4,200 registration sites across Afghanistan have to date issued more than 8.6 million Afghans with voter registration cards.
The UN said Sunday that 90 percent of an estimated eligible 9.8 million voters had already registered. Other estimates have put the number of eligible voters at around 10.5 million.
Registration sites will reopen after the presidential election in October to allow more voters to register for parliamentary balloting, which has been delayed until April 2005 to allow the government time to stem a rising tide of violence.
Just last week, two people were killed and two others injured in a blast at a mosque being used for voter registration in the southeast province of Ghazni, bringing the total number of election workers killed this year to five.
Attacks on soft targets such as aid workers and civilians, as well as US-led and Afghan government soldiers, have also risen as elections draw nearer.