UN to set up international probe into Afghan vote

KABUL (AFP) - The United Nations will set up an international panel to probe irregularities in Afghanistan's elections, officials said, as intense negotiations were under way to reach a breakthrough agreement with protesting candidates.
The Afghan-UN Joint Electoral Management Body had "decided to request the UN to identify an impartial panel of international electoral experts to fully investigate these protests", vice-chairman Ray Kennedy told a news conference.
The three-man panel would include a former Canadian diplomat and a Swedish electoral expert, with the third member still to be identified, Kennedy said.
Kennedy also announced that vote counting had been put on hold in case there was any need to deal with a specific ballot box. "We have asked the ballots not to be mixed," he said.
If candidates who boycotted the election on Saturday wanted to cast their votes, their demands would be considered, Kennedy said.
That possibility is believed to be part of negotiations under way to reach an agreement with the protesting candidates, including President Hamid Karzai's main rival, Yunus Qanooni, officials said.
The negotiations involve reopening some polling stations and Qanooni's casting his own vote after he boycotted the election Saturday, his aide Hamid Noori told AFP.
A senior spokesman for the election commission Ultan Mohammad Baheen said it was "discussing a request by Qanooni, and other issues related to weather conditions, either to open ballot boxes or not."
Noori said that if polling stations were reopened, "all those candidates including Qanooni who have not voted will cast their vote."
Part of the agreement would involve the setting-up of an independent inquiry into the irregularities in the election, Noori said.
Qanooni was among 14 candidates who on Saturday called for a halt to the election, charging fraud and irregularities after it was discovered that ink meant to stain voters' fingers to prevent multiple ballots was rubbing off.
Most of the candidates stood no chance of winning, apart from Qanooni, who has the support of powerful Northern Alliance figures who held key posts in Karzai's cabinet.
The UN probe will run alongside an inquiry by election officials into the vote, which passed off surprisingly peacefully with millions of men and women turning out despite Taliban threats of violence.
Depending on when counting begins, first results could be available within days, but final results are expected to take two to three weeks.
If, as expected, US-backed Karzai wins, the focus will shift to whether he has can bring together the fractious groups in this country after 25 years of conflict.
The opposition candidates include powerful regional and ethnic leaders -- some of whom have large private militias -- and UN and Western diplomats are working hard to ensure they accept the result.
Karzai told a news conference Sunday there would be "no horse trading" if he wins the election, but it is widely expected that Qanooni would be offered a senior position if he accepts the outcome.
Some of the other protesting candidates have already softened their initial call for the election to be scrapped and held again, saying they would bow to the findings of an independent inquiry.
Afghanistan's first experience in democracy saw a "massive" attendance at voting booths, the UN said, and the absence of feared attacks by the former Taliban rulers, who have killed hundreds of people including 12 electoral workers this year.
The hardline regime was ousted three years ago by US-led forces for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the September 11 terror attacks.