Claims of fraud double

KABUL, Afghanistan — Major fraud complaints in the Afghan presidential election surged Sunday to nearly 700, raising concern that the volume of cases that must be investigated will delay announcement of a winner and formation of a new government.

President Hamid Karzai is leading with 46.2 percent of votes from the Aug. 20 ballot, followed by ex-Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah with 31.4 percent, according to official figures from 35 percent of the polling stations. Karzai must win more than half the votes to avoid a runoff.

Final results cannot be certified until the election complaint commission finishes investigating all major fraud allegations. Officials had hoped to release the final tally by Sept. 17, but the huge number of complaints makes that unlikely.

The commission said Sunday it had received 691 "Category A" fraud allegations - more than double the 270 major complaints reported two days before.

Collectively, the complaints - if true - would cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election, dashing Obama administration hopes that the balloting would produce a credible government capable of confronting the Taliban threat,corruption and the flourishing narcotics trade.

A spokesman for the complaints commission, Nellika Little, said in all, 2,096 allegations of fraud and voter intimidation had been received. The commission is still evaluating those complaints and the number of those deemed major could rise, she said.

Abdullah has accused Karzai of using state resources to rig the vote and has ruled out an alliance if the incumbent wins. Election day was also marred by low turnout as well as Taliban threats and attacks.

Several presidential candidates have leveled accusations of fraud, including allegations that electoral officials forced voters to cast ballots for certain candidates and marked unused ballots after the balloting was over.

Karzai's campaign has denied that and countered by accusing Abdullah's campaign of fraud. Both camps have urged the country to wait for the complaints commission to finish its work.

An American member of the election complaint commission, Scott Worden, said the Sept. 17 date for releasing the final tally was not a legal deadline.

"Our first priority is being thorough and making sure we have resolved all the complaints that could affect the outcome in a comprehensive way," he said.

The head of an Afghan group that monitored the balloting said the complaints commission may not have a large enough staff to investigate the allegations quickly.

"I think the time is a difficulty," said Nader Nadery of the Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan. "I hope that the time issue is addressed through more human resources that they would put in place."

Nadery said his organization documented cases of underage voting and Afghan men trying to cast multiple ballots supposedly on behalf of men and women who couldn't make it to the polling station - all prohibited acts.

Observers also saw widespread examples of poll workers trying to sway the vote either by telling them to cast ballots for aspecific candidate, or by stuffing ballot boxes, Nadery said. He said his group has videos and pictures of fraud.

Polls in the run-up to the vote showed Karzai leading but falling short of the 50 percent mark needed to avoid a runoff. Karzai's popularity has waned in recent years because of public disenchantment over corruption and ineffective government.

The election was held against the backdrop of rising violence, especially in the south where Taliban influence is greatest.

On Sunday, gunmen on motorbikes shot the second-ranking electoral official in the southern province of Kandahar, Sharafuddin, as he walked through his front gate on his way to work, said Mohammad Samimi, a spokesman for the provincial electoral commission.

Sharafuddin, who used only one name, was rushed to a military hospital with serious wounds, the spokesman said.

Elsewhere, militants killed a provincial counterterrorism chief in an ambush Saturday in eastern Afghanistan, officials said. Three civilians were also killed in a roadside bomb blast Sunday in the south.

The U.S. military reported that about three dozen militants were killed Friday in a day long battle with U.S. and Afghan forces in eastern Paktika province.

A CBS Radio News correspondent wounded in east Afghanistan was flown to a U.S. military hospital in Germany on Sunday for additional medical treatment, the military and her employer said.

Cami McCormick was wounded Friday when the Army vehicle she was in struck a roadside bomb in Logar province. CBS said she was in stable condition after receiving treatment at a U.S. Army field hospital and the main health facility at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul.

CBS said McCormick was flown to the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, which receives wounded from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Landstuhl spokesman Marie Shaw confirmed that McCormick had arrived at the hospital but gave no details on her condition, citing patient privacy.

In Pakistan, officials rejected accusations that its army illegally modified American-made missiles to increase its land-strike capability, denying Sunday that it reconfigured anti-ship weapons in a way that could target India.

A news report said the Obama administration made a diplomatic protest to Pakistan's prime minister over the alleged alterations to the anti-ship missiles Islamabad bought in the 1980s.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan is a key U.S. ally in fighting militants along its border with Afghanistan, but its weapons development and antagonistic relations with giant neighbor India, also a nuclear power, have raised concerns of an arms race.

Bombings targeted a Pakistani police station and set a NATO fuel convoy ablaze Sunday, killing 16 cadets in the northwest's Swat Valley's main town of Mingora and threatening the supply line to international forces in Afghanistan in a separate attack near the border.

A suicide bomber sneaked into the courtyard where they were training and detonated his explosives, local government official Atifur Rehman said.

The two blasts hours apart and hundreds of miles from each other came as Pakistani officials said the Taliban were ramping up strikes to avenge recent setbacks, including the loss of territory to the military and the death of their top leader in a CIA missile strike near the Afghan border.

A statement from Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said Sunday that it "categorically rejected" the article in The New York Times saying that Harpoon anti-ship missiles had been modified and that they could pose a potential threat to giant rival India.

The newspaper cited senior Obama administration and congressional officials as saying the allegation first surfaced in June in an unpublicized diplomatic protest to Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

Information for this article was contributed by Rahim Faiez, Amir Shah, Noor Khan, Asif Shazad, Kay Johnson and Matiullah Achakzai of The Associated Press.