Karzai nears Afghan win

HAMID Karzai clinched a majority of the votes cast in Afghanistan’s first presidential election, near-complete results showed yesterday, leaving him all but certain of becoming his country’s first democratically-elected leader.

His chief rival, former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni, announced he was willing to accept the election result, but only if irregularities in the vote were acknowledged by a panel of foreign investigators.

By yesterday evening, Mr Karzai had 4,240,041 votes, over half the estimated 8,129,935 valid votes cast in the October 9 ballot, the joint UN-Afghan electoral board said. That means even if all the remaining estimated votes went to other candidates, Mr Karzai would still have more than the 50% necessary to avoid a runoff.