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.

With 7,666,529 valid votes or 94.3% of the total counted, Karzai had received 55.3%, 39% ahead of Mr Qanooni.

Mr Karzai has served as the country's interim leader since shortly after US forces drove out the former ruling Taliban in 2001 for harbouring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida training camps.