Karzai 'secure' in Afghan election

Interim leader Hamid Karzai was certain to win Afghanistan’s landmark presidential election, his campaign spokesman said today, after early returns gave him a commanding advantage.

“We think we are secure now,” Hamed Elmi told The Associated Press. “When they announce it formally, then we will celebrate.”

Meanwhile, the running mate of ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, currently running third in the vote count, conceded defeat.

With one-fifth of the votes from the October 9 ballot counted, Karzai has captured 61.3%. His closest challenger, former education minister Yunus Qanooni, trails on 18.8%. Dostum is third with 8.3%.

Elmi said the Karzai camp was also “100%” sure that the US-backed incumbent would win a simple majority of the estimated eight million votes cast to avoid a run-off.

Chafiga Habibi, vice-presidential candidate on Dostum’s ticket, told AP: “I think Karzai is going to win because he’s a long way ahead in the results, and we can’t ignore this reality.”

Qanooni has so far refused to concede defeat and claimed yesterday that only fraud had given Karzai the advantage.

Counting has been delayed by complaints ranging from alleged ballot-box stuffing to problems with the ink used to mark people’s hands on polling day to stop them voting twice.

Election officials say they will not call the result until the winner is certain, but have also said that the tallies are unlikely to change much once 20% of the votes have been counted – a point reached yesterday.