KABUL, Oct 14 (AFP) - The first results in Afghanistan's historic presidential election Thursday put President Hamid Karzai in the lead as counting finally got underway after delays over fraud charges and boycott threats.
The counting began in five of the eight tallying centres across the war-torn country five days after millions of men and women defied the previous hardline Islamic Taliban regime to have their first say in their country's destiny.
Preliminary results showed the US-backed incumbent Karzai, considered the favourite of 18 candidates to win the election, had garnered about 58 percent of the 26,123 votes counted, the electoral commission said.
Trailing Karzai in second place with 16.8 percent of the vote was the man seen as Karzai's chief rival Yunus Qanooni while ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam was third with 12.8 percent, the Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body website said.
Surprisingly in conservative Islamic Afghanistan, Massooda Jalal -- the only female presidential challenger out of 18 candidates -- was in fourth place with 2.5 percent of the vote ahead of ethnic Hazara warlord Mohammed Mohaqeq had 2.0 percent of the ballots counted, it said.
The initial results -- of which just 452 were declared invalid despite the fraud charges -- represent only a tiny fraction of the ballots due to be counted across Afghanistan in coming days.
The counting in the remaining rally centres was set to begin on Saturday, after a break for the start of the Muslim holy month Ramadan on Friday, UN electoral staff said.
In the counting centres, men and women sat together, something not normally seen in conservative Afghanistan, as they went through the ballots. Some women wore make-up and had their hair uncovered, unheard of under the previous Taliban regime.
"I am very happy to be counting votes because this is the first time Afghanistan has had an election and now there will be big changes," said one election worker, Abdul Wali.
The count from Saturday's historic ballot was put on hold while diplomats lobbied key opposition candidates to drop calls for a boycott over charges of multiple voting and other irregularities, and an international panel was set up to probe their complaints.
The possible boycott threatened to undermine the credibility of the shattered central Asian state's first exercise in democracy after colonial rule, monarchies, a communist regime, Soviet occupation, civil war and Taliban repression.
It also cast a pall over the jubilation of voters who flocked to 5,000 polling stations, braving dust-storms in the south and snow in remote Hindu Kush villages and defying threats of sabotage, which never materialised, from bitter Taliban loyalists.
Thousands of stuffed ballot boxes carried across the rugged land by helicopter, donkey and trucks had been piling up in the eight counting centres since Saturday, waiting for counting to begin.
It was given the go-ahead earlier Thursday as a UN-appointed panel of three international experts set up to study the complaints announced it would isolate ballot boxes it wanted to investigate.
The rest of the boxes were released for counting.
The international panel had extended a deadline for complaints to be lodged until 6:00 pm Thursday (1330 GMT). By the first deadline Tuesday 43 complaints from at least four candidates had been filed.
The main concern was that ink used to stain voters' fingers and prevent multiple voting was found to wash off.
Other allegations were that polling stations opened late and closed early in areas dominated by opposition supporters, and that electoral staff misbehaved.
A final result could take several weeks, officials have said.
After the near-crisis over ballot irregularities, officials are desperate to avoid similar problems during the counting, which is being conducted by hand and under strict supervision and observation.
US President George W. Bush and other Western leaders hailed the election as an outstanding success. Karzai and the commander of US-led forces in Afghanistan called it a defeat for "terrorists", including the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies.
Afghan voters "delivered a resounding defeat to the terrorists who had sought to deny them their rightful future and that message has been heard around the world", Lieutenant General David Barno told a news conference.
The Taliban and their guests from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network were ousted by a US-led invasion late 2001 after the Taliban refused to surrender bin Laden, alleged to have masterminded the September 11 attacks.