Karzai and rival both claim victory in Afghan vote
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President Hamid Karzai's campaign and chief rival Abdullah Abdullah both said on Friday they had won Afghanistan's election, but Washington's chief envoy warned candidates not to declare victory prematurely.
Karzai's campaign manager and Abdullah both said preliminary, unofficial results showed they had won enough votes to avoid a potentially destabilizing second round of voting in October. Election officials said no confirmed results had been released.
"Initial results show that the president has got a majority," Karzai's campaign manager Deen Mohammad told Reuters. "We will not get to a second round. We have got a majority."
Abdullah, Karzai's former foreign minister, dismissed the Karzai camp's victory claim and said he was on track to win in the first round after Thursday's vote, which went ahead despite sporadic violence after the Taliban threatened the vote.
"I'm ahead. Initial results from the provinces show that I have more than 50 percent of the vote," Abdullah told Reuters by telephone in Kabul.