U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Afghanistan this week to urge two presidential candidates to jointly share presidential duties after election results are complete. 

Kerry arrived in the country Thursday, marking his second visit in less than a month to push Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah to share power after an audit of the recent election is over. 

The two politicians shook hands, agreeing to resolve the election dispute. Yet, the two still do not see eye-to-eye concerning major aspects of a coalition government. 

The eight million ballots cast in the disputed election are being audited, but neither candidate has endorsed the audit. The governmental impasse has increased the threat of violence among different ethnic groups, according to Reuters. 

The West hopes the audit will name one candidate the legitimate president before a NATO summit in early September. 

Kerry will meet with each candidate Friday, as well as with President Hamid Karzai at the presidential palace. 

Karzai said that the next president will be inaugurated on the 25th of this month, but officials say the deadline is overly optimistic, suggesting it could take until the end of the month at the earliest to declare the election's winner. 

"We are hopeful the secretary can obtain a commitment by both candidates to a timeline for completing the audit and agreeing on the details of a national unity government," a senior State Department official told Reuters. 

NATO wants Afghanistan to have a leader at the summit before Western troops withdraw from the country at the end of 2014. 

According to a deal brokered by Kerry, the candidate who formally wins will take on the role of president and form a unity government, and the losing candidate will become chief executive. Yet, the structure of the government still needs to be detailed, and the two candidates have very different opinions on both politics and governmental structure. 

While the candidates agreed on five points earlier in the week, there is a still a lot of progress that needs to be made prior to either candidate taking office. 

Abdullah was the winner in the first round of voting but did not obtain a majority and accused Ghani and Karzai of skewing the runoff result because Ghani won in the preliminary counts. 

The election results, which marked the first democratic transfer of power in the country's history, are being audited by international observers. 

A State Department official said there is not yet a discussion about what will occur if a new president and national unity government is not up and running by the time of the NATO summit. 

Both Ghani and Abdullah said they are both committed to signing a bilateral security deal that will allow Washington to keep some troops in the country past 2014. 

"They will have a far greater chance of success if they can demonstrate they are the credible leadership of Afghanistan and are working together in a government of national unity," the official said.