A panel was investigating complaints of Afghan election irregularities yesterday, further delaying the start of counting in a historic poll overshadowed by concerns over multiple voting. President Hamid Karzai is widely expected to sweep to victory in the country’s first direct presidential vote, and Saturday’s poll has been called a triumph as millions of men and women defied Islamic militant threats to cast their ballots.

But a boycott by 14 of the 18 presidential candidates was a invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a huge exercise in logistics and security.

By Wednesday, only two of three members had been named to a panel appointed by the UN-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB), and 37 of 43 complaints of voter fraud by candidates had been looked into.

The deadline by which candidates had to submit their protests was also put off until yesterday evening, meaning vote counting was unlikely to start until then.

<B>US military not pulling out</B>

The advent of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan this week could further slow a process that may take more than three weeks. Ballot boxes are being brought from remote mountain passes and deserts to eight counting centres by car, helicopter and donkey. Karzai, seen as a guarantor of billions of dollars in foreign aid needed to rebuild the war-shattered country of more than 25 million people, did receive some good news on Wednesday.

General Abdul Rashid Dostum, one of his main challengers for the leadership, ended his boycott of the poll, joining the two other top contenders in dropping their objections. “He met yesterday with the candidates and all termed the election a victory, but they all said that there were violations and that they should be assessed,” said Dostum’s spokesman, Faizullah Zaki.

The administration of President George W. Bush wants to claim the poll as a success before the US election on Nov. 2, particularly after worsening security in Iraq has raised questions over polls scheduled there early next year.

The commander of 18,000 American-led troops in Afghanistan hunting remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda said the United States had no intention of pulling out, despite a US proposal to give NATO the leading military role as early as 2005. “The merger will entail both of the forces coming together as opposed to one force leaving and one force staying,” Lieutenant-General David Barno said on Wednesday.

<B>Taliban insurgency against US-led operations </B>

There are also 9,000 NATO-led peacekeepers in Afghanistan, and the US proposal, on the table at a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Romania, has spooked some of its alliance partners concerned about changing from a peacekeeping to combat mission. France and Germany on Wednesday rejected any merger of NATO-led and US-led operations in Afghanistan.

Barno also told a news briefing that the election had dealt a major blow to the Taliban insurgency against the US-backed government and foreign forces in which about 1,000 people have been killed since August last year. “The overwhelming success of this election was a strategic defeat for the Taliban and al Qaeda and is a turning point for Afghanistan,” he said.

The Taliban were toppled by US and Afghan resistance forces in 2001 for failing to hand over al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks. US forces are involved in regular skirmishes with Taliban militants, but high-level al Qaeda targets such as bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to have fled the country.

Human rights groups want NATO and the United States to bolster their presence before parliamentary elections in April that they say will be more vulnerable to violence not only by Islamic militants but also by regional warlords. Impoverished Afghanistan has been torn by war for more than a quarter century and has not held any form of election since the late 1960s.

<B>David Fox