"Afghan Leader Appeals to NATO for Support Ahead of Summit"

Two rockets struck near the U.S. military base in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Friday morning, the eve of Afghanistan's historic presidential election, a spokesman for the NATO-led peacekeeping force said.

One rocket failed to explode when it hit across the street from the base close to the media accreditation centre for the election. The capital has been braced for attacks by Taliban fighters and their allies before the vote.

There were no reports as yet of casualties from the rocket that did explode, the spokesman said.

First votes cast in Afghan poll

The first vote in Afghanistan's landmark presidential election has been cast in neighbouring Pakistan by a woman refugee.

Moqadasa Sidiqi, 19, cast her ballot in a refugee colony on the edge of the capital Islamabad as the polls opened at 7:00am (local time).

The polls in Pakistan for 740,000 enlisted refugee voters opened half an hour earlier than they were due to open in Afghanistan because of the time difference between the countries.

Thok, why not start your own thread about the elections?

Afghan President Hamid Karzai appealed to NATO Friday to make good its pledge to send more troops to protect his country's elections and ensure they can be held on schedule in September.

Karzai rivals claim Afghan election fraud
Afghanistan's presidential elections have been plunged into crisis after 14 of the 18 candidates announced they would boycott the polls because of irregularities.
An aide to Yunus Qanuni, the main challenger to President Hamid Karzai, said the opposition candidate was demanding a suspension of the first Afghan exercise in democracy for decades to prevent further fraud.

Another challenger, Abdul Satar Sirat, said 14 candidates called for a halt following an early morning hitch when it appeared the ink meant to prevent multiple voting could be rubbed out.

"Today's election is not a legitimate election. We are not a part of today's election," Sirat said after an emergency meeting on Saturday.

But the election commission said the glitch was a case of inexperienced electoral workers in Kabul polling stations using the wrong ink and had quickly been rectified.

Qanuni's aide meanwhile said the halt call had also been prompted by claims that while polling stations were open in areas noted for Karzai supporters, they had closed in areas popular with opposition supporters.

Voters had flocked to polling stations as soon as they opened at 7:00 am (0230 GMT) despite threats of violence from supporters of the former Taliban and al-Qaida.

Karzai, who cast his vote around under tight security in Kabul, said he was aware of the ink problem and was taking it seriously.

"This is very important for our election....The important point is that all Afghans around Afghanistan are taking part in the elections," he said.

Urgent meeting

Electoral commission spokesman Aykut Tavsel said organisers were holding an urgent meeting to decide how to proceed.

US-backed Hamid Karzai was
chosen as interim leader in 2002

"Directors are meeting to decide what to do," Tavsel said. "Our official position right now is that the elections go on."

However, when asked if the elections could be abandoned or postponed, Tavsel replied: "Any of these scenarios are possible."

Karzai, chosen as interim leader by a council of tribal leaders in June 2002, only managed one campaign rally. His first attempt at rallying the people was aborted by an assassination attempt.

The urbane 46-year-old is running against 17 other candidates, including one woman, a French-speaking poet and two regional commanders.

Chief rival Qanuni is the favourite of the powerful anti-Taliban ethnic Tajik clique from the northern Panjshir Valley.

With few policies in the campaign, most Afghans were expected to vote along ethnic lines, giving Karzai a strong chance as he hails from the southern Pashtun majority, shared by the former Taliban rulers.

Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and Baluchis make up the rest of the mosaic of Afghanistan's tribes.

Threats

Most candidates were expected
to vote along ethnic lines
Fears were high ahead of the poll that regional commanders, who still wield power through their private armies, would intimidate voters.

The still-undersized Afghan army and police force are inadequate to guard all 5000 polling booths so militiamen from regional commanders' private armies have been deployed in many areas.

Only 230 international monitors are braving threats of Taliban violence, which has claimed 12 electoral workers' lives since May. Almost 4000 local observers are assisting.

The country was reported to be largely peaceful except for a firefight between US-led troops and armed fighters south of Kabul in which three coalition troops were wounded, Major Scott Nelson of the US-led coalition said.

Concerns were raised briefly on Saturday when a Western official reported a bombing at a polling station in the north, but Afghan officials and international peacekeepers said no such blast had occurred. They said a truck fire had broken out but caused no injuries.

A flurry of rockets landed in several cities around the country on Thursday and Friday, including one that hit a parking lot near the US embassy and another that injured a young girl and an old man in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

Interim leader Hamid Karzai has won a majority of estimated votes cast in Afghanistan's landmark presidential elections, according to preliminary results released Sunday.

However, Karzai has not been declared the winner. An expert panel is still reviewing allegations of electoral fraud leveled by other candidates, and it may take another week for the announcement of official results.

Karzai has won 4,105,122 votes, more than half of the estimated 8,114,071 valid votes cast in the Oct. 9 vote. He must get more than 50 percent to win the election outright and avoid a runoff against his closest challenger.

Some 7,473,059 valid votes have been counted so far, with Karzai currently at 54.9 percent, 38.5 points ahead of his nearest rival, Yunus Qanooni.

It is possible that more votes were actually cast than the current estimate, but barring a near-reversal in the current pattern of results, the changes would not be enough to drop Karzai under the 50 percent mark. Electoral officials have said they will not call the election until the investigation into the fraud allegations and the vote count are both complete.

Karazai has served as the country's interim leader since U.S. forces drove out the former ruling Taliban regime in late 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden.

Although many Afghans are frustrated at the slow pace of their country's recovery, Karzai is trusted as a bridge to foreign backers and has rounded up strong support in the cities and among fellow Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group.

Still, rivals have scored strongly among ethnic minorities in the north and center of the country, perpetuating the deep ethnic and factional divides that sustained years of fighting.

U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said the panel met with election observers and some candidates' representatives on Saturday. It decided to recommend further investigation of less than 15 of some 100 ballot boxes quarantined.

Polling day passed without major violence, prompting American commanders and Afghan politicians to write off the Taliban as a fading force.

But the euphoria surrounding the elections received a damper on Saturday when a suicide attacker detonated grenades in a busy shopping street in Kabul, killing an American woman and an Afghan girl and injuring three Icelandic peacekeepers.

A purported spokesman for the Taliban claimed it carried out the attack, and said more suicide missions were being prepared.

Karzai condemned the attack as the work of the enemies of Afghanistan and Islam.

"The efforts of terrorists will be fruitless because the Afghan people are determined to continue on the path of reconstruction, democracy and stability," he said in a statement.