Afghan election returns on Tuesday put incumbent Hamid Karzai on course for a first-round victory, but a UN-backed watchdog said it had "clear and convincing evidence of fraud" and ordered a partial recount. The results put Karzai and the Afghan election authorities on a collision course with an international community increasingly sceptical of the outcome of a poll it paid for.
Officials said the partial recount of the August 20 poll could postpone a final result for weeks or months, keeping Afghanistan in a prolonged state of political uncertainty. With votes from 91.6 percent of polling stations counted, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) reported Karzai ahead with 54.1 percent of the vote to 28.3 for main rival Abdullah Abdullah, who accuses Karzai's team of large scale fraud.