Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah says he will not take part in a power-sharing deal with incumbent Hamid Karzai if that means accepting what he views as a fraudulent election.
"I don't find a place for myself in this mafia-type system," Mr Abdullah said in an interview last night at his home in Kabul.
He spoke hours after the Independent Election Commission said Mr Karzai had widened his lead, 42 per cent to 33 per cent for Mr Abdullah, with about 17 per cent of votes counted.
Mr Abdullah said he "will not accept the outcome" if Mr Karzai is declared the victor, unless the commission resolves hundreds of complaints of voter fraud.
Local and provincial government and electoral officials helped conduct a "state-engineered fraud," stuffing ballot boxes for Mr Karzai and discarding voting papers marked for other candidates, he said.
Complaints of fraud combined with a lower turnout than in the first presidential poll in 2004 may undermine the legitimacy of the result.
A clear mandate would strengthen the government in its conflict with Taliban Islamic insurgents, and offer an eventual way out for the US-led forces that have lost 1,343 soldiers in the fighting, according to iCasualties.org.
Mr Abdullah's campaign has filed more than 200 reports of voting fraud with the United Nations-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), he said. "We have faith in the integrity of the commission, in which three of five members were named by the UN Secretary-General's office, but we will need to see its capabilities in dealing with so many cases," Mr Abdullah said.
Updated returns suggested a turnout of about six million voters, compared with eight million in the country's first direct presidential vote five years ago.
Independent monitoring teams say opportunities for fraud rose in last week's vote because Taliban influence over many rural areas kept independent observers, as well as voters, away from polling places.
Bloomberg