Security fears over hasty Afghan run-off: poll boss

KABUL (Reuters) - Election authorities fear security forces won't have enough time to secure all of the thousands of voting stations for next month's run-off vote in Afghanistan's disputed presidential poll, a senior official said on Thursday.

With U.S. President Barack Obama waiting for some political clarity in Afghanistan before deciding whether to send thousands more troops to battle a resurgent Taliban, Afghan election officials this week ordered a second round run-off for November 7.

That came after a U.N.-backed fraud watchdog invalidated tens of thousands of votes for President Hamid Karzai from the August 20 first round, pushing him below the 50 percent mark needed to avoid a run-off against his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.

The government-appointed Independent Election Commission (IEC) was widely criticised for its running of the first round, which was tainted by widespread fraud.

The IEC's chief electoral officer Daoud Ali Najafi said he was not convinced little more than two weeks was enough time to make all voting stations safe.

"I don't think they are able to secure (polling centres) in time for the second round. Security is really a big concern for us," Najafi told Reuters in an interview in Kabul.

Organizers face a logistical nightmare getting the second round ready as Afghanistan's harsh winter approaches.

About 25,000 polling stations opened for the first round. The United Nations said this week it expected about 16,000 would open for the run-off. Afghanistan has about 17 million registered voters but far fewer than that voted in August.

The August vote went ahead despite Taliban vows to disrupt the poll. There were sporadic attacks but not enough to derail the process.

"NOT SOON ENOUGH"

Najafi said he met with representatives from NATO and with Afghanistan's defense and interior ministries on Wednesday and had submitted a list of polling centres to be secured.

He was told work would get started on securing the centres on Sunday but said that was not soon enough.

"Our concern is that if they do not start working on time, it will affect our movements and plans," Najafi said.

A former political adviser to the United Nations who has overseen parliamentary and provincial council elections in Afghanistan, Najafi said he has been under intense pressure from all candidates and foreign officials.

"In any election, a management body cannot satisfy everybody. Losers will always complain and make allegations. I will defend this election in any tribunal or international court," he said.

He said the IEC plans to set up fewer polling stations for the run-off based on turnout figures from the first round which showed some districts had been overstaffed. Najafi said he anticipated turnout in the run-off would be even lower.

Najafi said that fraud in the first round of the elections was inevitable but that his efforts to provide as much transparency as possible helped expose the scale of the problem.

Najafi said there were few safeguards against fraud in Afghanistan's first post-Taliban presidential election in 2004, which was run by Karzai's Western backers.

"In this election everybody knows how many voters came to the polling station and how many votes are cast ... we provided more transparency, fraud was just exposed," Najafi said.

He pointed out that ballots were counted at polling stations this time around instead of at regional centres, minimizing the opportunity for vote-tampering while ballot papers were moved.

He said the IEC was unfairly treated and portrayed by the media as incompetent and partial toward Karzai as opposed to the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission, which is headed by a Canadian and has many international staff.

"It's not fair that the international community is of the view that they did their job and the IEC didn't," Najafi said.

Of 380 district election chiefs in the first round, more than 200 have already been sacked or replaced, Najafi said.

(Editing by Paul Tait) (For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: here)