KABUL (AFP) - President Hamid Karzai, the incumbent poised to become Afghanistan's first popularly-elected leader, said he expects the official announcement of October 9 polls on Sunday.
With a meagre 1.6 percent of ballots remaining from the war-torn land's first presidential election, the US-backed interim leader is on 55.5 percent but the formal result is on hold until the conclusion of fraud inquiries.
The election commission "has told us they will announce the results on Sunday," Karzai told visiting Italian deputy foreign minister Margherita Boniver Tuesday, according to his press adviser Khaleeq Ahmad.
"Once the results are in and I am the winner, then I will celebrate."
Karzai, Afghanistan's leader since the hardline Islamic Taliban collapsed three years ago, has a 39.3 percentage point lead over his closest rival and former education minister, Yunus Qanooni, who has 16.2 percent of votes.
"It's a source of happiness that we got more than 50 percent," Karzai's spokesman Jawed Ludin told a weekly press briefing earlier Tuesday.
He would wait for the results to be certified before reacting, Ludin added.
Afghanistan, a rugged and landlocked central Asian state, has been ruled by colonial powers, monarchs, communists, Soviets, warlords and the Taliban, but never before by a democratically-elected leader.
The man voters have chosen comes from a political Pashtun family of southern Afghanistan. He studied in India, lived in exile in Pakistan, helped plot to oust the Soviets and led a rebellion against the Taliban in their last days.
The drawn-out hand count in the presidential election had all but finished late Tuesday, with only several quarantined boxes containing "a very small number" of ballots waiting to be determined.
Counting was down "to the last dregs... all that remains are the quarantined boxes," election operations chief David Avery said, referring to boxes which had been isolated on suspicion of irregularities.
However the certification of the election and Karzai's landslide victory must await the conclusion of inquiries by a United Nations-appointed international panel.
"There won't be any declaration of final results until they are satisfied they have all the information that allows them to make a declaration of results in an informed way," election adviser Silvana Puizina told AFP.
The panel told candidates' representatives Monday they were only examining complaints of alleged fraud on election day.
"This election-day-only investigation does not satisfy us, we want an overall investigation of the whole process," Qanooni's vice-presidential running mate, Sayed Hussain Alimi Balikhi, told AFP.
French-speaking Tajik intellectual Abdul Latif Pedram shared the Qanooni camp's view, as did Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam's running mate, Shafiqa Habibi.
"The investigation should take place in all three periods," Habibi told AFP.
Several newspapers and Qanooni have already acknowledged Karzai as the victor.
"Vote count shows Karzai is the certain winner," declared Tuesday's Arada (Goal) daily. Government newspaper Anees proclaimed: "Karzai is the winner, Yunus Qanooni accepts defeat".
The Watandar weekly said Karzai was chosen "because he was the beginning of peace and security in Afghanistan".
In the Kabul counting centre, one of eight regional vote-tallying centres, excitement reached fever pitch as the count neared its climax.
"This is a very important day! Afghans are waiting to know their future!" said Fatana Qurishi, 24, an observer from the private Human Rights Commission, barely able to contain her enthusiasm.
More than a fortnight has passed since millions of people voted with their feet against violence-threatening Taliban insurgents and streamed to 5,000 polling stations in a wave of jubilation.
The Taliban, who were driven from power by US-led forces in late 2001, had threatened more bloodshed on polling day but failed to disrupt the vote. Since then 21 people have died in attacks blamed on them.
10/26/2004 - 18:16 GMT - AFP