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Afghan Minister: The West wants to control election results

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-09-17 14:43

KABUL: Afghanistan Minister for Information and Culture Abdul Karim Khuram has accused western countries of attempting to change the result of presidential election at their own will, a local newspaper reported Thursday.

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"Today US and western countries are trying to find place for their citizens in Afghanistan under different excuse and in this regard the government and the Independent Election Commission are under pressure," daily Arman-e-Millie writes in its edition.

The remark, according to the newspaper, has been made while the US and Britain have repeatedly expressed their impartiality in the Afghan presidential election held on August 20.

Dimitra Ioannou, the deputy head of the European Union Observation Mission to Afghanistan (EU-EOM), Wednesday said that some 1.5 million of votes, nearly one quarter of all ballots, cast in the August 20's presidential election are suspicious.

Ioannou told reporters in a press conference that "EU-EOM's own findings confirm that large scale ballots stuffing took place at polling station levels."

The EU official added that among the 1.5 million votes, 1.1 million votes were cast for incumbent Hamid Karzai, 300,000 for his main rival Abdullah as well as some 92,000 for Ramazan Bashardost.

However, President Karzai's campaign office has termed the European Union Observation as "partial, irresponsible and in contradiction with Afghanistan's constitution" and rejected it.

Karzai has secured 54.6 percent of votes in the preliminary full result announced by the election commission Wednesday while his top rival Abdullah Abdullah bagged 27.7 percent.

Final results of the poll is expected to be announced within weeks after examination of over 2,700 complaints by the electoral complaints commission (ECC).