Karzai holds lead in historic Afghan presidential election

KABUL, Afghanistan – Hamid Karzai clinched a majority of the votes cast in Afghanistan’s first presidential election, near-complete results showed Sunday, leaving him all but certain of becoming his war-wrecked nation’s first democratically elected leader.

His chief rival, former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni, announced he was willing to accept the election result, but only if irregularities in the vote were acknowledged by a panel of foreign investigators.

“For the national interest and so the country does not go into crisis, we will respect the result of the election,” said Syed Hamid Noori, spokesman for Qanooni. “But we also want the fraud to be made clear.”

By Sunday evening, Karzai had received 4,240,041 votes, more than half of the estimated 8,129,935 valid votes cast in the Oct. 9 ballot, the joint U.N.-Afghan electoral board said. That means that even if all the remaining estimated votes went to other candidates, Karzai would still have more than the 50 percent necessary to avoid a runoff.

With 7,666,529 votes – or 94.3 percent of the total – counted, Karzai had received 55.3 percent, 39 percentage points ahead of Qanooni.

Karzai’s campaign spokesman said Sunday’s figures confirmed optimism that the interim leader would triumph when the final results are released in the next few days.

Karzai has served as the country’s interim leader since shortly after U.S. forces drove out the former ruling Taliban regime in late 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda terrorist training camps.

Victory would make him Afghanistan’s first popularly chosen leader after a quarter century of war.