KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 9 (UPI) -- Partial returns indicate President Hamid Karzai won a majority in his re-election bid but vote fraud complaints persist in Afghanistan, analysts said.
If Karzai's 54.1 percent vote count, against 28.3 percent for his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, is certified, Karzai will become president for another five years without a runoff. However, the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission has ordered a partial recount at a number of polling stations where it said it found clear and convincing evidence of fraud.
The vote percentages released are from the 91.6 percent of the polling stations counted so far.
Fraud complaints include allegations of stuffing of hundreds of thousands of votes that were included in the vote count, The New York Times reported, citing international election officials and observers.
Some U.N. staff members were reportedly upset with the refusal of the Afghan Independent Election Commission to enforce safeguards, which may have denied Karzai an outright win.
"He was below 50 percent when you exclude the obviously fraudulent votes," one Western official told the Times.
However, Daoud Ali Najafi, deputy chairman of the election commission, denied any partisanship, adding all fraud complaints would be investigated, the report said.
The Times of London quoted Afghanistan poll monitors as saying thousands of fraudulent ballots for Karzai were accepted by the Afghan election commission. The report said the U.N.-backed commission did not say how many votes were fraudulent but the European Union's monitors suggested the number could exceed 566,000, which if proved, would force Karzai into a runoff.
