Next year’s presidential election in Afghanistan has been postponed by three months, election authority sources say.
It was initially due in April. A new date in mid-July or early August is to be announced on Thursday.
Many potential candidates had been unable to meet registration requirements and extreme weather meant their teams could not organise for a spring date, the sources told the BBC.
It comes days after reports that the US was to withdraw thousands of troops.
About 7,000 troops – roughly half the remaining US military presence in the country – could go home within months, the US media reports said.
On Monday 43 people died in a suicide and gun attack on the Afghan ministry of public works in Kabul, officials said.
Meanwhile Iran has held talks with the Afghan Taliban, a senior Iranian security official said.
