Karzai and Abdullah in Runoff Election [Updated]

KABUL, Afghanistan (ABC News) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed today to a runoff election against his top challenger after a U.N.-backed audit found that he had failed to win more than 50 percent of votes in the fraud-plagued election.

Flanked by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and U.N. Special Representative Kai Eide, a visibly tired Karzai defused what the U.S. feared would be a crisis if he rejected the Electoral Complaints Commission report. Instead, Karzai declared the runoff legal and constitutional.

(Guardian) – An independent calculation by an election monitoring group, Democracy International, showed Karzai with 48.3 percent, or about 2.1 million votes, after more than 995,000 of his votes were thrown out for fraud. Voter turnout dropped to 32%.

Afghan vote fraud – VIDEO

ECC Decisions with regard to the results of the 20 August 2009 Presidential Elections …

Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission is expected to dispute the findings of a commission responsible for declaring the final results of the presidential vote, according to several officials.

The UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission is scheduled to release the final results from August’s presidential election, which has been plagued with allegations of voter fraud, at about 8:30 a.m. ET. According to several accounts, the findings of the five-member investigative panel will force a run-off vote.

“It will be the responsibility of the IEC to take our decisions and make the necessary adjustments to the preliminary results before they can then certify the final results of the presidential election,” said commission head, Canadian Grant Kippen, in a brief written statement sent to the CBC.

Two international officials who have seen the results said enough votes for President Hamid Karzai were thrown out that his totals dropped below the 50 per cent threshold needed to avoid a run-off with top challenger Abdullah Abdullah.

Afghan poll: Main fraud allegations

WASHINGTON DC (McClatchy) — As two commissions reviewing allegations of fraud in Afghanistan’s August 20 presidential election haggled in Kabul, a top Obama administration official and a senior Senate Democrat publicly turned up the heat on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to find a credible end to the electoral dispute.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said on CNN that President Barack Obama wouldn’t make a decision on his military commanders’ request for as many as 80,000 additional American troops in Afghanistan until the administration is convinced that the country has a credible central government.

“It would be reckless to make a decision on U.S. troop level if, in fact, you haven’t done a thorough analysis of whether, in fact, there’s an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that the U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing the Afghan country,” Emanuel said.

Sen. John Kerry, D- Mass. , the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee , who’s visiting Afghanistan , told CNN that, “It would be entirely irresponsible for the president of the United States to commit more troops to this country when we don’t even have an election finished.”

Bush never asked key questions on Afghanistan