Keep lid on tensions, U.S. envoy tells Afghan rivals

KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke urged Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and his chief rivals on Friday to keep a lid on post-election tensions and to wait for official results some fear could lead to an ethnically charged runoff.

Election observers say a second round of voting pitting Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, against his leading challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, who draws support from Tajiks in the north, risked dividing the country along ethnic lines.

Thursday's presidential election, marked by sporadic violence but no large-scale attacks despite Taliban threats to disrupt the vote, could be a turning point in U.S. President Barack Obama's efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.

He is counting on an increase in U.S. ground forces and financial aid to stem the Taliban's resurgence.

Officials say it is unclear whether Afghans will consider the next government as legitimate because of allegations of vote fraud and security concerns, which appeared to restrict turnout in the violent south.

"Ethnic violence is always a factor in this country but it is not inevitable," a senior U.S. official told reporters on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Holbrooke, Obama's envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, met with Karzai and Abdullah on Friday, pressing both camps not to preempt the final vote count, which may not be known for weeks.

He said he was bracing for more disputes and charges of fraud before the election outcome becomes clear. One candidate, Ashraf Ghani, has already challenged Thursday's results, alleging ballot-box stuffing and intimidation.

"We're not going to support any of it," Holbrooke said of the premature election victory declarations issued by Karzai's camp and Abdullah on Friday.

Holbrooke said the United States and the international community would "respect the process" and wait for official results. Afghanistan's election commission had hoped to announce some results as early as Saturday.

"That's not going to happen," a U.S. State Department official said. More likely, the official said, partial results would come out starting on Monday or Tuesday.

Karzai needs more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a run-off.

Observers say his chances appeared to be dimmed by relatively low voter turnout in the Pashtun-dominated south, including his home province of Kandahar, where the president draws his strongest support but where voters faced the brunt of Taliban attacks and intimidation.

U.S. officials said voter turnout in the Tajik-dominated north appeared to be among the highest in the country, boosting prospects for Abdullah, whose father was a southern Pashtun.

"Everybody is jumping on that (ethnic violence) bandwagon looking at a Tajik leader and a Pashtun leader," another U.S. official said.

"But this country has been through civil war, and at a time when ... one of the campaigns had suggested there would be ethnic violence, it was Afghans who were the first out there saying, "We're not going back to the 1990s'," the official said.