US envoy 'expects' disputes over Afghan election

By HEIDI VOGT and JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer

KABUL – The U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan said Sunday that allegations of vote rigging and fraud are to be expected in the Afghan presidential election but observers should wait for the official complaints process to run its course before judging the vote's legitimacy.

"We have disputed elections in the United States. There may be some questions here. That wouldn't surprise me at all. I expect it," Richard Holbrooke told AP Television News in the western city of Herat. "But let's not get out ahead of the situation."

Millions of Afghans voted Thursday in the country's second-ever direct presidential election, although Taliban threats and attacks appeared to hold down the turnout, especially in the south.

President Hamid Karzai's top challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, accused the president of rigging the vote in an interview with The Associated Press on Saturday. Another presidential candidate has displayed mangled ballots that he said were cast for him and then thrown out by election workers.

Election observers have said the voting process was mostly credible, but are cataloging instances of fraud and violence.

The top Afghan monitoring body has said there were widespread problems with supposedly independent elections officials at polling stations trying to influence the way people voted. The group also catalogued violations such as people using multiple voter cards so they could vote more than once, and underage voting.

Holbrooke said the U.S. government would wait for rulings from Afghanistan's monitoring bodies — the Independent Election Commission and the Electoral Complaint Commission — before trying to judge the legitimacy of the vote.

"The United States and the international community will respect the process set up by Afghanistan itself," Holbrooke said. He has been in Afghanistan observing the vote, following a trip to Pakistan last week.

Preliminary results will not be released until Tuesday, but final certified results won't come until next month. If neither Karzai nor Abdullah gets 50 percent of the vote among a field of some three dozen candidates, then the two will go to a runoff, probably in October.

In the interview Saturday, Abdullah said he was in contact with other campaigns to explore the possibility of a coalition candidacy in case none of the 36 candidates won enough votes to avoid a runoff.

The accusations of fraud against Karzai, which Karzai's spokesman denied, are the most direct Abdullah has made against the incumbent in a contest that likely has weeks to go before a winner is proclaimed. Both Abdullah and Karzai claim they are in the lead based on reports from campaign poll-watchers monitoring the count.

"He uses the state apparatus in order to rig an election," Abdullah said. "That is something which is not expected."

Abdullah said it "doesn't make the slightest difference" whether Karzai or his supporters ordered the alleged fraud.

"All this happens under his eyes and under his leadership," Abdullah said. "This is under his leadership that all these things are happening, and all those people which are responsible for this fraud in parts of the country are appointed by him."

Abdullah said government officials in Kandahar and Ghazni provinces, including a provincial police chief and a No. 2 provincial election official, stuffed ballot boxes in Karzai's favor in six districts. He also said his monitors were prevented from entering several voting sites.

Karzai's campaign spokesman Waheed Omar dismissed Abdullah's allegations and claimed the president's camp had submitted reports of fraud allegedly committed by Abdullah's followers to the Electoral Complaint Commission. Omar said losing candidates often claim fraud to "try to justify their loss."