With counting due to begin on Wednesday, several rivals of
frontrunner President Hamid Karzai have abandoned a boycott of
Saturday's poll over what they said were fraud and
irregularities.
Another rival, a powerful general, was in Kabul to discuss his
position with intermediaries.
Karzai's chief rival, Yunis Qanuni,
withdrew a boycott call on Monday, issued after suspicions were raised regarding
illegal multiple voting
.
The Afghan-UN Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) is
setting up a panel to investigate.
Another main candidate, Uzbek general Abd al-Rashid Dustum,
met US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, an
influential behind-the-scenes dealmaker on Karzai's behalf.
Poll foul-up
US President George Bush, facing his own election
battle next month, has hailed the Afghan vote as a foreign
policy success and hopes it can be mirrored in war-torn Iraq.
However, Afghans believe Khalilzad's interventions are because
Washington wants to avoid a foul-up in these polls before the US
election on 2 November.
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US-backed Karzai is favourite to
win the poll |
Agreement by Dustum to recognise the election, joining
Qanuni and Hazara leader Muhammad Muhaqiq, would signal the
collapse of the boycott that had undermined a vote in which
millions of Afghans turned out despite threats of Taliban
attacks.
The impoverished, Islamic nation has been torn by war for
more than a quarter of a century and has not held any form of election
since the late 1960s. It has never directly chosen a leader.
Karzai, a member of Afghanistan's largest ethnic group -
the Pashtun - was picked by the US to head a transitional government
after the Taliban was ousted by US-led forces
in late
2001.
An exit poll conducted by the Washington-based
International Republican Institute, a US thinktank
associated with Bush's Republican party, showed Karzai heading
for a landslide.
Nato forces
With more than 12,000 survey responses recorded, Karzai had
more than 50% of the vote and enough to avoid a run-off with
second-placed Qanuni.
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The US wants Europe to commit
more troops to Afghanistan |
The full count is likely to take about three weeks because
of difficulties in transporting ballot boxes to counting
centres.
UN sources in Kandahar, once the bastion of the Taliban
that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, said counting of
southern ballots may not begin for three to four days, after
some boxes were found with their seals broken.
Meanwhile, diplomats said the US would urge European allies
to help expand Nato's peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan at a
meeting of defence ministers starting on Wednesday.
With the Afghan election broadly free of violence, Nato is
anxious to push ahead with an operation whose credibility has
been hurt by the reluctance of allies to offer troops and
equipment.