Kabul:
UN-backed fraud investigators threw out hundreds of thousands of votes for President Hamid Karzai in the country's disputed August election, according to a report released Monday. The findings set the stage for a runoff between him and his top challenger.
It was unclear, however, whether the Afghan-led Independent Election Commission would accept the findings of the fraud panel and announce a runoff. Karzai's spokesman said it was too soon to make a judgment based on the figures released by the panel.
That could mean a further delay in forming a new government that the US believes is needed to help combat the growing Taliban insurgency. A protracted crisis could also lead to political unrest.
The White House has also said no decision on sending more US troops to Afghanistan would be made before the election crisis is resolved -- a stance reiterated by the civilian chief of the NATO military alliance on Monday.
"There is a need for rapid decisions (but) it's important to stress that there is a strong need for the international community to have a credible and accountable government in Kabul to deal with," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in Brussels.
US Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who was among a host of international envoys in Kabul at the weekend urging the president to accept the fraud rulings, returned on Monday to resume meetings with Karzai, the US Embassy said.
Two international officials familiar with the investigation by the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission told The Associated Press that the findings showed Karzai falling below the 50 per cent threshold needed to avoid a runoff with his chief rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.
An independent calculation by an election monitoring group, Democracy International, showed Karzai with 48.3 per cent, or about 2.1 million votes, after more than 995,000 of his votes were thrown out for fraud.
Preliminary results released last month showed Karzai winning the August 20 election with more than 54 per cent. However, allegations of voter coercion and ballot box-stuffing prompted the fraud investigation and held up a final proclamation of a winner.
Abdullah campaign spokesman Fazel Sancharaki welcomed the fraud panel's findings and said they showed Karzai's percentage of the vote was 48 per cent.