With one-third of the votes counted in Afghanistan's landmark presidential election, Hamid Karzai was leading with 64 percent, and his campaign team said Tuesday it was certain the interim leader will win with the simple majority required to avoid a run-off.

The camp of ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, currently third, also said Tuesday that the race is over, but Karzai's main challenger accuses the US-backed incumbent of cheating and refuses to concede defeat.

Karzai's rivals have lodged dozens of complaints with a panel of foreign experts, though it is unclear if the panel will report before the expected release of the official election result at the end of October. Karzai needs at least 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff. Election officials have said the tallies are unlikely to change much once 20 percent of the votes have been counted.

Karzai, who has served as president since US-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in late 2001, has mixed results in the returns from northern and central provinces where his ethnic Tajik and Uzbek rivals are strongest. However, he appears set to sweep southern and eastern regions dominated by his fellow Pashtun tribesmen.

NATO helicopters on Tuesday rescued a team of Afghan election workers from snowbound mountains in the country's remotest corner, and retrieved the last four ballot boxes containing ballots from the Oct. 9 election.

The four election workers and two police officers had been stuck in freezing conditions in northeastern Badakhshan province since Oct. 12. On that day, a UN helicopter sent to collect them crash-landed in the towering Pamir range, an illustration of the difficulties facing election organizers. Donkeys have also been used to bring ballots from remote valleys in other parts of Badakhshan.

The election was a milestone in Afghanistan's modern history. Although the country is still dogged by Taliban-led rebels, factional fighting and a burgeoning drug trade, Afghans turned out in force to vote, seeing the event as a chance for peace and democracy after a quarter-century of conflict.

The official election Web site, which keeps a rolling tally of results, said that 36 percent of the estimated 8 million votes cast have been counted, including at least partial returns from all 34 provinces.

Karzai has captured 1,857,476 votes, or 64.4 percent. His closest challenger, former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni, trails with 16.6 percent. Dostum is third with 7.4 percent.

"We think we are secure now," Karzai's campaign spokesman, Hamed Elmi, told The Associated Press. "When they announce it formally, then we will celebrate." He said the president's campaign staff was "100 percent" sure they would win in the first round of voting.

Chafiga Habibi, vice presidential candidate on Dostum's ticket, told AP on Tuesday, "I think Karzai is going to win because he's a long way ahead in the results, and we can't ignore this reality."

Karzai is seen by many Afghans as untainted by the country's bloody past and the best chance for bridging its ethnic divisions, although signs are that voting has largely followed tribal lines.

In 13 Pashtun-dominated provinces in the south and east, Karzai is winning with more than 80 percent of the vote. Yet in many of the 12 provinces where he is trailing, he has less than 20 percent — most notably in Qanooni's stronghold in the Panjshir Valley, where Karzai currently polls less than 1 percent of the vote.

Qanooni, an ethnic Tajik, has refused to concede defeat and claimed on Monday that ballot boxes had been stuffed with votes in favor of Karzai in at least four provinces. Election officials say there is no evidence of this.

Meanwhile, the US military said Tuesday that it had arrested a Taliban suspect in connection with a blast that killed five people traveling in an election commission vehicle in southeastern Paktika province the previous day. They also seized explosives and "other evidence linking this attack to the Taliban," a statement issued in Kabul said.

Although the Oct. 9 polling day was largely peaceful, Taliban rebels have killed at least 13 election workers this year.

"We know they are the enemy of our country and they were not able to do anything on polling day, but still they are trying to disrupt the process," Afghan presidential spokesman Jawed Ludin said of the rebels.

(China Daily via agencies October 20, 2004)