Karzai promises peace talks with Taleban

“But be careful – and it’s something that Saudi Arabia should remember – there’s no question of a dialogue with Taleban who don’t renounce their links with al-Qaeda or who refuse to recognise the Afghan constitution.”

Partial results from what is only the second presidential election in Afghan history show Mr Karzai approaching the 50-per cent threshold needed for a first-round win.

But he has been accused of massive electoral fraud by his main opponent, the former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, and faces the prospect of legal challenges if he is awarded victory.

The New York Times reported today that Karzai loyalists had set up hundreds of fictitious polling stations, which existed only on paper and returned thousands of ballots towards his re-election in the August 20 poll.

They are also accused of taking over around 800 legitimate polling stations and using them to skew the contest in his favour so that in some districts he is alleged to have received ten times more votes than were actually cast in total.

In his Figaro interview, Mr Karzai was typically defiant, accusing the West of trying to make him a “puppet” leader despite the lessons of Afghani history.

Asked about the fraud allegations, Mr Karzai accused his opponent of sour grapes. “This is an election: there will be a winner and a loser,” he said. “If I am the loser, I too will be bitter.”

He added: “What has been very deceptive is the way in which British and American media organisations have lacked respect as regards these elections. Just think of the 22 officials from the Electoral Commission who have lost their lives during this democratic process reviled by the Taleban! Think of the Afghan policemen and Nato soldiers who have been killed!

“These journalists are trying to render the future Afghan government illegitimate. But if this media manipulation is designed to install a puppet government, it won’t work.

“In Afghanistan, puppets have never brought their foreign masters much luck. In the past, both the British and Soviet empires have tried, but failed miserably. I hope the Americans don’t try the same thing because they will expose themselves to the same fate.”

Partial results released yesterday show Mr Karzai leading the election count with 48.6 per cent of the vote, well ahead of Mr Abdullah on 31.7 per cent. The next results are due to be released tomorrow although the final results are not due before next week.

But after revelations that votes from 447 polling stations across the country – around 200,000 votes – were nullified because of fraud, Afghanistan’s deputy chief electoral officer, Zekria Barakzai, called for stricter punishment for vote-rigging.

“In most democratic countries the punishment for election fraud is equal to that for terrorism and drugs but unfortunately this is not the case under our law,” he said.

“If we had such strong laws, we would willingly punish whoever is responsible for vote fraud.”

The Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) says that it has received more than 2,000 complaints, around a third of which it says could impact the outcome of the election.

Mr Barakzai said that teams from the Independent Election Commission had found suspicious ballot boxes in a number of polling stations, but would not go into detail about which candidates had been favoured.

He did say that many votes had been “marked with one pen in favour of the same candidate and entire ballot books dropped into boxes without the pages being torn off”.

“I think it is a serious issue and so we have decided to nullify those votes,” he said, adding that most of the fraudulent votes were found at sites in Paktika, Ghazni and Kandahar provinces, considered Mr Karzai’s heartland.

The IEC said yesterday that each polling site had around 600-700 ballots, so the cancelled ballots “could be around 200,000 votes”.