A commission backed by the UN yesterday declared it had "convincing evidence of fraud" in Afghanistan's elections and called for a recount of suspect ballots.
The announcement came as the count put President Hamid Karzai over the 50% threshold necessary to avoid a runoff and win re-election. With more than 90% of the votes counted, Karzai was ahead of his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, by 54% to 28%.
It was unclear yesterday whether the partial recount ordered by the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission could overturn that margin of victory. The ECC, which is made up of two Afghan commissioners, an American, a Canadian and a Dutch commissioner appointed by the UN, has the power to nullify fraudulent votes and order a new ballot. It is considering more than 720 major fraud complaints.
"We just take this on a complaint-by-complaint basis, and how that pans out, we really don't know and in many respects don't care, because it's not material to the work that we're doing," Grant Kippen, the Canadian commission chairman, told journalists.
Daoud Ali Najafi, the chief electoral officer of the Afghan-run Independent Election Commission, which ran the first-round vote on 20 August, said that a recount could take two or three months.
However, election observers said a second round of voting or a wholly new vote would be hard to hold after October, once winter begins to set in, particularly in inaccessible mountainous regions. The resulting limbo puts western forces in a difficult position, as they will be fighting to sustain an Afghan government whose legitimacy is gravely in doubt. It comes at a time when the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, is expected to submit a request for more troops to Washington and Nato.
Christopher Langton, an Afghanistan expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: "If Karzai holds off against a second round, which appears likely, the influence that can be exerted on him by his western backers will be much less."
Both US and UN diplomats have held meetings with Karzai in recent days, but the outcome of those talks is not known.
Election officials yesterday provided some examples of election fraud. They included piles of ballot papers that had not been folded so could never have been put through a ballot box slot, and large numbers of identically marked ballots from the same place.
"In some areas the turnout was higher than the number of ballots we sent to the polling station," Najafi said.
Western officials have also alleged that votes were submitted from hundreds of fake voting sites, especially in southern Afghanistan, Karzai's political base.
The sense of crisis hanging over Afghanistan has been deepened by a Nato air strike on Friday in Kunduz province, in which scores of civilians may have been killed. Nato's International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) acknowledged for the first time yesterday that there had been civilian casualties from the air strike, which was ordered by a German commander in Kunduz, aimed at two fuel tankers that had been hijacked by Taliban militants. The death toll has not been established, but Afghan Rights Monitor, a national watchdog group, said that between 60 and 70 villagers had been killed.
The incident represented the deadliest military operation German troops have been involved in since the second world war. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said her government deeply regretted the death of Afghan civilians but told parliament she would not tolerate criticism "at home or abroad" until the full details of the incident were known. She said the German army's presence in Afghanistan was "in the urgent interest of our country".
An Isaf statement said commanders originally believed the tankers were surrounded only by Taliban insurgents, but a subsequent review showed "civilians also were killed and injured in the strike".
The Kunduz air strike has caused a rift between German and US authorities over the conduct of the war, and prompted a fierce reaction from the Afghan government. McChrystal has sought to distance himself from the incident, and has appointed a Canadian general to investigate it.
Addressing a special sitting of parliament, Merkel acknowledged that civilians may have been harmed, but said that contradictory reports of the incident meant that the victims had still not been identified.
Less than three weeks before a general election, the attack has also become a major political issue in Berlin. Merkel resisted calls from the Left party for an immediate withdrawal of German troops, but she said Nato allies should define a "clear goal" by the end of the year regarding a "handover strategy".