Karzai Tops Early Afghan Returns

Early results put interim leader Hamid Karzai far ahead of his chief rivals in Afghanistan's landmark presidential election Friday, as the vote count was suspended for a day for the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Of 35,986 valid votes counted in six northern and central provinces, the U.S.-backed incumbent won 20,213, or 56.2 percent of the total, according to the official election Web site.

Former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni, who was expected to be Karzai's closest challenger, was running at 17.2 percent, ahead of ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum with 15 percent.

The tally represented only a tiny fraction of the estimated 8 million votes cast. Counting only began Thursday after five days of delays while a panel of foreign experts probed allegations of electoral fraud.

Karzai, who has led Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban regime by U.S.-led forces in late 2001, is widely expected to win the vote and become Afghanistan's first popularly chosen president. He hopes to secure a simple majority to avoid a run-off vote with his closest rival.

Final results are due at the end of October, although it should be clear who has won after about a week. No votes have been counted yet in the Pashtun-dominated south where Karzai is expected to make his strongest showing.

Many Afghans see Karzai as a bridge to the country's international backers and a leader untainted by more than two decades of divisive fighting. But they are impatient for him to deliver on pledges to rebuild their impoverished country.

On Friday, a preacher at Kabul's main Pul-e-Chishti mosque exhorted the new leader to rule according to Islamic principles and stay in touch with the people.

"If the president becomes too arrogant, we will cut him down! Isn't that right?" Mullah Obeid-ul Rahman said, drawing cries of "God is great!" from hundreds of worshippers, some listening via loudspeakers in the street outside the overflowing mosque.

Afghans turned out in force for the election despite threats of attacks by Taliban rebels that largely failed to materialize. Reginald Austin, the top adviser to the Joint Electoral Management Body, or JEMB, said that according to an early estimate, voter turnout was between 75 percent and 80 percent.

Some 95 percent of ballot boxes have now been transported from thousands of polling stations across the rugged country to eight counting centers.

On Friday, two NATO C-130 military transport planes left Kabul to collect the last of the ballots from neighboring Pakistan and Iran, where about 850,000 Afghan refugees also voted. However, the plane bound for Tehran had to turn back because of illness among the crew, a spokesman said. The flight was rescheduled for Sunday.

The 1,000 Afghan counting staff were given Friday off to celebrate the start of Ramadan, the Islamic fasting month. Counting was to resume Saturday.

With the formation of the three-member panel to investigate the fraud allegations, most of Karzai's 15 challengers have stepped back from a boycott they announced on polling day, Oct. 9, after complaints surfaced that indelible ink used at some polling stations to stop multiple voting could be washed off voters' hands.

Austin said that the panel had also received complaints of ballot-box stuffing and voter intimidation. It has quarantined ballots from at least 10 polling centers in four provinces, including Kabul. Austin said that could include a maximum of 200 ballot boxes containing some 140,000 votes.

Several candidates met Thursday with the foreign experts on the panel, whose probe appears to have strengthened the chances for a new president to consolidate feeble central control in a country widely controlled by warlords and drug barons.

"We hope this commission can investigate fairly and in an atmosphere free from diktat or any pressure," Qanooni said afterward.