WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Afghan Interior Minister Ali Jalali on Monday said he was never under consideration to become transitional president for Afghanistan and that he would never have accepted the position.
“The bottom line is that I’ve never been contacted. I’ve never been considered. I never thought about it, and I’m not interested,” Jalali, who served as Afghanistan’s first interior minister after a 2001 U.S.-led invasion, told Reuters.
Jalali, who is a professor at the U.S. National Defense University in Washington, spoke by telephone from Washington.
He was responding to a Reuters report that quoted three diplomatic sources on Sunday as saying he would likely be named to head a transitional administration in Kabul as the Taliban took over the capital.
Jalali noted that he would be barred from serving as Afghanistan’s president because the country’s constitution restricts the post to Afghan citizens and he also has U.S. citizenship.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
