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CBS News | Afghan Candidates Boycott Election

(AP) Afghanistan's first direct presidential election was thrust into turmoil hours after it started Saturday when all 15 candidates challenging interim leader Hamid Karzai said they'd boycott the results, alleging fraud over the ink meant to ensure people voted only once.

Electoral officials rejected the candidates' call to abandon the rest of the balloting, saying it would rob millions of voters of their chance to cast ballots and that they would rule later on the legitimacy of the election.

"Halting the vote at this stage is unjustified and would deny these people their right to vote," said Ray Kennedy, the vice chairman of the joint U.N.-Afghan panel overseeing the election. "There have been some technical problems but overall it has been safe and orderly."

Karzai said the fate of the vote was in the hands of the electoral body, but he added that in his view "the election was free and fair ... it is very legitimate."

"Who is more important, these 15 candidates, or the millions of people who turned out today to vote," Karzai said. "Both myself and all these 15 candidates should respect our people — because in the dust and snow and rain, they waited for hours and hours to vote."

The boycott cast a pall over what had been a joyous day in Afghanistan.

Millions of Afghan voters braved threats of Taliban violence to cram polling stations throughout this ethnically diverse nation, in an election aimed at bringing peace and prosperity to a country nearly ruined by more than two decades of war.

It also was a blow to the international community, which spent just under $200 million staging the vote. At least 12 election workers, and dozens of Afghan security forces, died in the past few months as the nation geared up for the vote.

The opposition candidates, meeting at the house of Uzbek candidate Abdul Satar Sirat, signed a petition saying they would not recognize the results of the vote, saying glitches with the ink used to mark voters' thumbs opened the way for widespread fraud.

Election officials said workers at some voting stations mistakenly swapped the permanent ink meant to mark thumbs with normal ink meant for ballots, but insisted the problem was caught quickly.

Sirat, an ex-aide to Afghanistan's last king and a minor candidate expected to poll in the low single-digits, said all of the 15 candidates still in the race against Karzai agreed to the boycott.

"Today's election is not a legitimate election. It should be stopped and we don't recognize the results," Sirat said. "This vote is a fraud."

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad arrived at the house later to meet with Sirat, making no comment other than to say he was there "only to help."

Khalilzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Afghanistan, has been widely criticized for perceived favoritism for Karzai, and is seen as a puppet-master by many Afghans. Several Afghans gathered outside the house joked that a resolution to the crisis was near because "the big man has arrived."

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