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An Afghan woman holds her identity card after casting her vote at a polling centre in Herat, western Afghanistan - Source: Reuters -
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Afghan election returns released put incumbent Hamid Karzai on
course for a single round victory, but a UN-backed watchdog said it
had found clear and convincing evidence of fraud and ordered a
partial recount.
The latest data from the Independent Election Commission
effectively put Karzai and the Afghan election authorities on a
collision course with an international community increasingly
sceptical of the outcome of an election it paid for.
With 91.6% of polling stations counted, the Independent Election
Commission reported Karzai ahead with 54.1% of the vote to 28.3%
for his main challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah
Abdullah.
It was the first time the commission had reported Karzai on course
to exceed the 50% threshold needed to avoid a second round, and
radically alters the calculations of Western diplomats keen to
ensure a credible outcome.
The results are final only after they are certified by the
Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), a separate body led by a
Canadian and mainly appointed by the United Nations.
For the first time, it went public with accusations of
fraud.
"In the course of its investigations, the ECC has found clear and
convincing evidence of fraud in a number of polling stations," the
body said in a statement.
It ordered the IEC to recount results from polling stations where
one candidate received more than 95% of the vote or where more
votes were cast than the expected maximum of 600.
Most of the stations where it found fraud had either a larger than
expected number of total votes cast, or a higher than expected
proportion cast for a single candidate, it said.
The election commission said it was already fighting fraud and had
set aside results from more than 600 of the country's 25,000
polling stations because of concerns over irregularities.
Some suspicious results posted earlier - including from a village
where Karzai received every single vote cast including exactly 500
at each of four separate polling stations - were removed from the
commission's web site without explanation.
Commission member Daoud Ali Najafi said it could take 2-3 months to
comply with the ECC's order, prolonging the state of limbo that the
country has been in since last month's poll.
A second round, if needed, would be difficult to hold in
Afghanistan beyond the end of October because of extreme
weather.
Attack shows deteriorating security
Hours before the results were released, a suicide car bomber blew
up his vehicle outside a NATO military base at Kabul's main airport
killing three civilians, the capital's worst attack since the vote
and a further sign of deteriorating security.
Huge flames could be seen rising from the blast site and the wail
of sirens could be heard several kilometres from the civil-military
airport, which has experienced a series of Taliban rocket attacks
and a suicide strike in the past.
A Taliban spokesman said by phone from an undisclosed location the
militants were responsible for the blast, targeting Western
forces.
The attack came less than a month after a suicide car bomber
struck the NATO headquarters entrance in Kabul, killing at least
seven people and wounding 100.
Increased violence in Afghanistan has sapped public support for the
war in the United States, which now has about 65,000 troops among
the 103,000 foreign troops there.
The war has also become a matter of major controversy in Germany
three weeks before a general election, after German troops called
in a US air strike last week that Afghan officials say killed
scores of people, many of them civilians.
Karzai called the decision to bomb hijacked fuel trucks in the
north of Afghanistan a major error of judgment.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
announced the start of a formal investigation into the incident,
led by a Canadian general.
For the first time, the force said clearly on Tuesday it
believed civilians had been killed.
"Subsequent review has led ISAF to believe that along with
insurgents, civilians also were killed and injured in the strike,"
it said in a statement.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, defending her government's Afghanistan
policy in parliament, rejected premature criticism of the air
strike - the deadliest incident involving German troops since World
War Two - and promised a full account.
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