Early results put interim leader Hamid Karzai far ahead of his chief rivals in Afghanistan's landmark presidential election yesterday as the vote count was suspended for a day for the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Of 25,671 valid votes counted in five provinces, the US-backed incumbent won 15,098, or 59 percent of the total, according to the official election Web site.
Former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni, who was expected to be Karzai's closest challenger, was running at 17 percent, ahead of ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum with 13 percent.
The tally represented only a tiny fraction of the estimated 8 million votes. Counting only began Thursday after five days of delays as a panel of foreign experts probed allegations of electoral fraud.
Karzai, who has led Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban regime by US-led forces in late 2001, is widely expected win the vote and become Afghanistan's first popularly chosen president after a quarter-century of conflict.
Final results are due at the end of October, although it should be clear who has won after about a week.
Afghans turned out in force for the election, despite threats of attacks by Taliban rebels that largely failed to materialize.
Reginald Austin, the top adviser to the Joint Electoral Management Body, or JEMB, said that according to an early estimate, voter turnout was between 75 percent and 80 percent.
Some 95 percent of ballot boxes have now been transported from thousands of polling stations across the rugged country to eight counting centers.
Yesterday, two NATO transport planes left Kabul to collect more ballots from neighboring Pakistan and Iran, where about 850,000 Afghan refugees also voted.
But the 1,000 Afghan counting staff were given yesterday off to celebrate the start of Ramadan, the Islamic fasting month. Counting was to resume Saturday.
With the formation of the three-member panel to investigate the fraud allegations, most of Karzai's 15 challengers have stepped back from a boycott they announced on polling day Oct. 9 after complaints surfaced that indelible ink used at some polling stations to stop multiple voting could be washed off voters' hands.
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