Qanooni presser, vote counting continues скачать в хорошем качестве

Qanooni presser, vote counting continues

(18 Oct 2004) 1. Afghanistan Presidential election candidate, Yunus Qanooni arriving at news conference 2. Journalists 3. SOUNBITE: (Dari) Yunus Qanooni, Election candidate: "If his excellency Hamid Karzai, my old friend, succeed in a fair and transparent election, I congratulate him and cooperate with him. But if the result is fraudulent, the legitimacy of this election will be in question." 4. Journalists 5. SOUNBITE (Dari) Yunus Qanooni, Election candidate: "I would like to clearly state to all of you that if there was no involvement of foul play and fraud in the elections on the basis of exact evaluations from the 34 province that I received, we had the support of fifty eight percent of the people of Afghanistan." 6. Journalists 7. Qanooni with Dr. Gino Strada 8. Various shots of vote counting in Kabul STORYLINE: Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, held a 45 percentage point lead on Monday in preliminary results from the country's first presidential election, though a chief rival said the validity of the vote was in doubt. The US-backed incumbent's closest challenger, former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni, claimed to have evidence of organised fraud in favour of Karzai and that the UN-Afghan electoral commission was ignoring his complaints. Qanooni told reporters that "If his excellency Mr. Karzai, my old friend, succeeds in a fair and transparent election, I will congratulate him and cooperate with him. But if the result is fraudulent, the legitimacy of this election will be in question." Millions of Afghans braved Taliban threats and poor weather to cast their ballots on 9 October, an unlikely democratic experiment after a quarter-century of fighting. Observers and officials acknowledge teething troubles, especially with ink used to mark people's hands to prevent them voting more than once. With 1.04 (m) million votes tallied by Monday morning, Karzai, Afghanistan's stopgap president since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, had captured 62.6 percent. That put him on course for the simple majority needed to avoid a run-off. Qanooni, who served as Karzai's interior and education minister, was trailing with only 17.7 percent, and ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum was third with 9.3 percent. About 13 percent of the total ballots cast have now been counted, drawn from 29 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. Almost all of Karzai's 15 opponents have complained of cheating to a panel of three foreign experts set up to head off their threat to boycott the results. Establishing the panel delayed the start of counting, and Qanooni has forecast that the figures will turn in his favour as more votes are tallied. However few independent observers believe that Qanooni, a member of the ethnic Tajik minority, could command a country deeply fractured by years of tribal and ethnic warfare. Official results are only expected by the end of October, but within this week it should be clear who has won the most votes. Also on Monday, an explosion killed an election worker and four other civilians in southeastern Afghanistan, the joint UN-Afghan electoral commission said. The blast hit a vehicle of the Joint Electoral Management Body near Yahya Khel, a town in Paktika, a troubled province on the Pakistani border, JEMB spokesman Sultan Baheen said. He said one employee of the commission, the driver of the vehicle, and three other civilians were killed. He said all were Afghans but had no further details on their identities. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...