NEW YORK - Former Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah has warned that a rigged parliamentary election in his country will be much more catastrophic than the discredited presidential election in August that prompted him to abandon his challenge to President Hamid Karzai. Parliamentary elections in Afghanistan are scheduled for September. He said he dropped out of the runoff contest with Karzai last year because he was worried that Afghans would be subjected to the same painful process that would disappoint them, adding that he urged his supporters not to protest in the streets. But in the event of a rigged parliamentary election, hundreds of candidates would find themselves in a situation similar to his, which could lead to a security crisis, he said at the US Institute of Peace, a think-tank. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is giving the cold shoulder to Abdullah, whose visit to Washington came at the heels of the high profile trip of his political rival, President Hamid Karzai. Abdullah, who unsuccessfully fought last Augusts presidential elections, landed in Washington last weekend, just after the Afghan president ended a week-long visit. But Abdullah complained in a New York Times interview that he is being ignored here. I tried all of them, the White House, the National Security Council, the State Department, the Pentagon, Abdullah said. I havent gotten a meeting yet. On Friday, administration officials signalled that Abdullah might get a meeting after all. Just seven months ago, Mr Abdullah was front and centre in the Wests efforts in Afghanistan, with American, European, NATO and United Nations officials all pressing Mr Karzai and Mr Abdullah to avoid further inflaming tensions after a disputed election initially left unresolved the question of who would be the next Afghan president, The Times wrote. Ultimately, Mr Abdullah dropped out of the race, but not before he accused the Karzai government of profound corruption and electoral fraud, a complaint he has continued to voice. it said. He said the main message he wanted to get across to the Obama administration officials who refused to see him was that along with the military build-up in Afghanistan, the West needed to rescue the political process, which he described as deeply flawed. The Afghan politician had a similar message when he spoke at the Brookings Institution. His message was pretty forthright: If we stick with the status quo, were going to fail, said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at Brookings, who a year ago was a co-author of Obamas first review of strategy in the region. Riedel said that several administration officials had initially expressed interest in coming to hear Abdullah at Brookings, but that in the end the only guy we got from the US government was from the Department of Homeland Security. Peter Galbraith, the former United Nations deputy special representative to Afghanistan criticised the Obama administration for slighting Abdullah.