Kabul, Sep 17 (DPA) President Hamid Karzai called for prudence Thursday, a day after preliminary official results gave him an outright win in the first round of a presidential election that was plagued by charges of vote rigging.
Despite the problems that have arisen, the voting was a success, Karzai said at a press conference, adding that the victor could only be declared when Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission and the UN-backed Election Complaints Commission release the final results.

According to the Afghan commission, Karzai won 54.6 percent of the vote in the Aug 20 poll, double the 27.8 percent of his nearest rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.

The results were released Wednesday shortly after EU election monitors said up to 1.5 million votes, or a quarter of all ballots, had been manipulated or were suspected of having been subjected to tampering.

The deputy head of the EU monitoring mission, Dimitra Ioannou, said 1.1 million of the suspect votes were in favour of Karzai and 300,000 were cast for Abdullah.

Karzai said Thursday that he was “shocked” by the numbers but that any charges of irregularities would be investigated by the Election Complaints Commission.

On Wednesday, he had called the EU findings “partial, irresponsible and in contradiction with Afghanistan’s constitution”.