Karzai 'will heed IEC ruling over vote'

The Afghan President's campaign team says Hamid Karzai will heed a ruling from election authorities despite earlier protests of western manipulation of the recount process.

"We have to wait for the final announcement through legal channels, which is the Independent Election Commission (IEC), and once the IEC announces the results then we are bound to accept it, based on the law," Karzai campaign spokesman, Waheed Omar said on Tuesday.

The statement came after the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) delivered a report Monday on investigations into ballot-stuffing. According to US monitors, nearly one million of Karzai's votes were fraudulent.

The report by the UN-backed Afghan watchdog shook Karzai's win in the key presidential elections by slashing his votes to 48 percent, lower than the 50 percent threshold necessary for unquestioned victory.

The ECC report would raise Abdullah's share of the vote to 31.5 percent and remove around 200,000 of Karzai's votes due to fraud, US-based Democracy International said.

This could mean the war-torn country needs to either persuade the rival camps to form a unity government to end two months of political chaos or hold a run-off between Karzai and his main rival, former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah within two weeks.

Omar's remarks are in contrast to his Saturday comments in which he accused foreigners of trying to manipulate the recount process, saying the new results would not be acceptable.

The Afghan president has been at loggerheads with Western powers over their handling of war in the violence-wracked country, blaming the US and NATO-led forces for causing a high civilian toll due to indiscriminate attacks against the alleged militants.

Karzai has also been under pressure over revelations regarding the foreign powers' role in expanding the insurgency throughout the country, including alleged shipments of Taliban insurgents by British choppers.

Karzai led the preliminary results with about 55 percent of the vote, while Abdullah came in second with an approximate 28 percent.