Afghan vote count on hold after dispute breakthrough

Three opposition candidates lodged complaints Tuesday of irregularities in Afghanistan's milestone election as ballots from 5,000 polling stations piled up waiting to be counted.
A UN-appointed three-person panel is examining allegations of multiple voting after the embarrassing discovery that indelible ink used to mark the fingers of those who had voted could be washed off.
"Two of (the panel appointees) are in Kabul already and they are working already," UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva told a news briefing. Yunus Qanooni, the chief challenger to President Hamid Karzai, ethnic Hazara warlord Mohammed Mohaqeq, and Ghulam Farooq Nijrabi have submitted complaints, election commission spokesman Sultan Baheen said.
The formation of the panel averted a crisis hanging over the shattered central Asian state's jubilant first exercise in democracy, after 14 opposition candidates boycotted and demanded a fresh election on charges of fraud.
In a breakthrough Monday Qanooni withdrew his boycott threat and said he would accept the international inquiry's findings.
Meanwhile stuffed ballot boxes trickled in from remote corners of the rugged land by helicopter and donkey to eight counting centres, adding to the growing pile of uncounted ballots. The count has been put on hold while the panel carries out investigations.
"There are counting papers piling up and they are ready to be counted. We are just waiting for the green light," said David Avery, the election commission's chief of operations
The boycott calls tainted an otherwise joyous day as millions of Afghan men and women flocked to polling stations for their first-ever say in choosing their leader, three years after the repressive Islamic Taleban regime was ousted by US-led forces.
UN CHOPPER CRASH-LANDS: A UN helicopter flying to retrieve ballot boxes after Afghanistan's landmark election was forced to crash-land in a remote snow-covered corner of the country on Tuesday, officials said.
Three crew and five passengers will have to spend the night in a snowfield at an altitude of more than 4,200 metres (12,000 feet) before US-led forces in Afghanistan can attempt a rescue operation on Wednesday, they said.