Karzai’s first time hint at runoff voting in Afghanistan

October 15th, 2009 Envoy says Afghan runoff election is likelyWASHINGTON — A runoff vote is very likely between incumbent Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his closest challenger in the country's highly contested election, Karzai's ambassador to the United States said Thursday. Said Tayeb Jawad predicted the runoff would follow an announcement expected within days by the U.N.-backed electoral commission looking into fraud in the August election.

October 15th, 2009 WASHINGTON - After five intense meetings on his war-fighting strategy in Afghanistan, US President Barack Obama is assessing all the options and is now "in the decision-making phase," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told Fox News. "We have finished at the broad landscape level.

September 22nd, 2009 Clinton: Obama wise to think through AfghanistanWASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton says he believes President Barack Obama is wise to step back and rethink U.S. policy in Afghanistan before approving the dispatch of additional U.S.

September 17th, 2009 WASHINGTON - With accusations of vote fraud piling up around Afghanistan's presidential election, incumbent Hamid Karzai is unlikely to claim victory any time soon. At the very least, a national electoral complaints commission investigating fraudulent voting will take weeks to determine how much of Karzai's officially declared 54.6 percent of the vote will be tossed out, reports the Christian Science Monitor.

August 31st, 2009 KABUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai's share of the vote in the hotly disputed Aug 20 presidential election shrank to 45.9 percent Monday, but still ahead of his nearest challenger by more than 12 percent, according to official figures. Figures posted on the Independent Election Commission's website showed that former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah garnered 33.3 percent of vote with ballots tallied from 47.8 percent of polling centres in the country.

August 29th, 2009 NEW YORK - Reports of widespread fraud in the second presidential elections in Afghanistan have introduced an unwanted strain in the relationship between Kabul and the United States. Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission said Friday that it had received over 2,000 complaints of fraud or abuse in last week's election.

August 24th, 2009 LONDON - As the raw polling station data declared Hamid Karzai's as Afghanistan's re-elected president in a landslide victory, allegations of vote-rigging have begun to surface. arly figures from campaign team observers suggest Karzai has won 72 per cent of the vote with his closest rival Abdullah Abdullah gaining 23 per cent, The Telegraph reports.

August 22nd, 2009 KABUL - Western officials here have expressed relief that many Afghans defied Taliban threats of reprisals and came out to vote, but they were clearly concerned on Friday that a second round of voting could extend the paralysis of a government that already barely functions and deepen ethnic tensions, in the worst case, to the point of a north-south civil war. A runoff, according to the New York Times, would also leave many of the Obama administration's Afghanistan policy initiatives up in the air- like fighting corruption and improving distribution of aid.

August 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama praised the elections that took place in Afghanistan Thursday as successful despite violence that claimed the lives of 26 people. "We had what appears to be a successful election in Afghanistan, despite the Taliban's efforts to disrupt it," Obama said in a radio interview.

August 20th, 2009 KABUL - Afghans began voting in the countrys second ever presidential election Thursday under the shadow of Taliban-led violence. Though unprecedented security arrangements have been in place, reports said that four rockets hit Kandahar city in southern Afghanistan minutes before the voting centres opened.

August 20th, 2009 KABUL - More than 50 people were killed during Thursday's voting in the Afghanistan presidential election, the government said after lifting the day-long reporting restriction. Interior Minister Hanif Atmar said nine policemen and nine civilians were killed during the polling violence, with 14 police and 13 other people wounded.

August 14th, 2009 Berlin, Aug 13 (ANI-IRNA): The Hamburg-based weekly news magazine Stern has said in a report that the half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has stockpiled tons of raw opium at his countryside residence in southern Afghanistan. According to the report quoted by the Iran's official news agency IRNA, British elite forces discovered and confiscated tons of raw opium which is the basis for producing heroin, at Ahmad Wali's ranch in Kandahar.

August 14th, 2009 KABUL - Voters in Afghanistan have been urged to turn out in large numbers for the Aug 20 general elections in a campaign run by the election commission and the United Nations. The Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan has enrolled a number of sports personalities and civic educators to organise mock voting across the country so that people learn the electoral process.

July 10th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of NASA-funded researchers have found that future concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and ozone in the atmosphere and of nitrogen in the soil are likely to have an important but overlooked effect on the cycling of water from sky to land to waterways. With the help of a modeling experiment, the researchers concluded that models of climate change may be underestimating how much water is likely to run off the land and back into the sea as atmospheric chemistry changes.

July 8th, 2009 JAYAPURA - Indonesians begin voting Wednesday in only the second direct presidential elections in the country's history, with incumbent Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is widely expected to win a second five-year term. Voting commenced at 7 a.m.