Interim leader Hamid Karzai has won the required number of votes for outright victory in Afghanistan's first presidential election, his supporters and his chief rival said on Sunday.
"We have a simple majority. This is exactly what we want," Karzai's campaign spokesman Hamid Elmi told AFP as soon as Karzai's tally passed four million ballots around 4:00 pm.
Karzai, the urbane 46-year-old Pashtun who has led Afghanistan's interim administration with strong US backing for nearly three years, had the "secure majority of 50 percent plus one", presidential aide Khaleeq Ahmad said.
"We are very delighted that we have a secure majority now. And we will wait to celebrate until 100 percent of the vote has been counted," Ahmad told AFP.
"We will celebrate when the results are officially announced and not before that."
Karzai's chief rival Yunus Qanooni was swift to acknowledge Karzai's majority, 15 days after the landmark ballot drew millions to vote for the first time in their lives.
"In order to respect the nation's will, based on the numbers announced up to now, we consider Karzai the winner in the elections and he got a simple majority," Qanooni's spokesman, Sayed Hamid Noori, told AFP.
"There were lots of cases of fraud and irregularities, which we reported. But as our candidate Qanooni has said, we shall respect the will of people even though there was fraud." Noori said Qanooni's acceptance of the result was also an effort to head off any potential violent reaction.
"To avoid violence and to respect the national interests of the country... we would respect the results announced by the commission," he said.
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