President Mamnoon attends Afghan President's oath-taking ceremony

President Mamnoon attends Afghan President's oath-taking ceremony
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Summary Mamnoon Hussain will hold a meeting with newly-elected Afghan President today.

KABUL (AFP, Web Desk) - President Mamnoon Hussain on Monday attended oath-taking ceremony of Afghan President-elect Ashraf Ghani.

Mahmoud Khan Achakzai, Asfand Yaar Wali and Aftab Sherpao were also present at the ceremony.

Afghanistan held a grand presidential inauguration, with former US-based academic Ashraf Ghani taking power as NATO troops end their 13-year war without defeating the fierce Taliban insurgency.

The event marked the country s first democratic transfer of power -- a benchmark seen by international donors as a key legacy of the costly military and civilian intervention since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

Ghani succeeds President Hamid Karzai after a bitter three-month standoff over disputed election results that fuelled the insurgency and worsened Afghanistan s dire economic outlook.

Both Ghani and his poll rival Abdullah Abdullah claimed to have won the fraud-tainted June 14 election, plunging Afghanistan into a crisis that threatened to trigger nationwide unrest.

Under heavy pressure from the US and UN, the two candidates eventually agreed to form a "national unity government", and Ghani was declared president after an audit of nearly eight million ballot papers.