Afghanistan splits election dates

Afghan presidential and parliamentary elections will not be held at the same time, the government has said.

Vote organisers told the Cabinet on Tuesday that a simultaneous vote was "impossible", President Hamid Karzai's spokesman, Jawad Ludin, said.

But he stressed that presidential polls would go ahead by late October.

The vote was postponed from June because of slow voter registration and rising violence by militants opposed to the US-backed Kabul administration.