KABUL, Oct 26 (AFP) - Incumbent Hamid Karzai was drawing "great happiness" from his lead in Afghanistan's presidential election, his spokesman said Tuesday as the count and validation process trickled towards a conclusion.
"It's a source of happiness that we got more than 50 percent," Karzai spokesman Jawed Ludin told a weekly press briefing.
With just 2.3 percent of ballots from the historic October 9 election remaining to be counted, Karzai is on 55.4 percent with a 39 percentage point lead.
But the US-backed interim leader of the past three years will not claim victory until election authorities announce the final result.
"President Karzai's reaction to the results will wait until the final results are announced by the joint electoral body," Ludin said.
While the drawn-out hand count could wrap up late Tuesday or Wednesday, election officials said a formal announcement may not come until the weekend.
"Sometime from Saturday we will announce the final results," joint UN-Afghan election commission spokesman Sultan Baheen told AFP.
Most of the ballot boxes remaining to be counted were from Pakistan, where 590,000 Afghan refugees voted, and the remote Hindu Kush province of Badakshan. As of 3:45pm (1145 GMT) 97.7 percent of votes had been tallied.
Several steps to determine the validity of the poll also remain before any declaration of Karzai's unofficial landslide victory.
A United Nations-mandated international panel is probing alleged fraud and other irregularities stemming from more than 100 complaints made by the 18 presidential candidates.
The panel has released 77 of 90 ballot boxes they had quarantined for investigation. The remaining 13 have been permanently quarantined.
The three-person panel met the candidates' representatives on Monday to discuss their progress in determining the validity of the vote.
At least two candidates emerged dissatisfied, professing disappointment that the probe was confined to alleged fraud on voting day.
"They say that they have a time problem and they cannot investigate the three processes: the campaign, the election day and the counting," Qanooni's vice-presidential running mate, Sayed Hussain Alimi Balikhi, told AFP.
"This election-day-only investigation does not satisfy us, we want an overall investigation of the whole process."
French-speaking Tajik intellectual Abdul Latif Pedram, polling fifth place, had the same view.
Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam's running mate, Shafiqa Habibi, would not say whether they were satisfied, but agreed the inquiry should be broader.
"The investigation should take place in all three periods."
The joint UN-Afghan electoral commission will only certify the ballot after considering the panel's report and its own internal investigations.
"As far as I know we will have the report from the panel this week, at the latest Saturday," Bejan said.
Several newspapers and Karzai's chief rival, Yunus Qanooni, have acknowledged the 46-year-old Pashtun as the victor, since preliminary results gave him a simple majority on Sunday.
"Vote count shows Karzai is the certain winner," declared the Arada (Goal) daily.
Government newspaper Anees proclaimed Karzai's victory for a second day running, with the headline: "Karzai is the winner, Yunus Qanooni accepts defeat".
More than a fortnight has passed since millions of people voted with their feet against Taliban insurgents and streamed to polling stations, some through snow-clad mountain villages and dust storms on southern plains.
The poll was their first chance to elect a leader and many voters said they saw it as a way to end a quarter-century of fighting and misery.
Taliban fighters, who have killed hundreds of people this year, had threatened more bloodshed on polling day but failed to disrupt the vote. Since polling day, 21 people have died in attacks blamed on them.
After the formal result announcement, 30 days must pass before the winner is inaugurated as president.
Parliamentary elections are slated for April 2005.
Karzai faces huge challenges in battling warlordism, Taliban insurgents, rampant poverty, illiteracy, and a shattered economy that is propped up by drug money and aid dollars to the tune of two billion dollars each annually.
10/26/2004 12:17 GMT - AFP