Partial Afghan Election Results Show Runoff Likely --- KABUL, Afghanistan — In the first official report of partial results from the Afghan presidential election, the candidates Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani appeared to be leading a race in which a runoff election was increasingly certain, according to data released by the Independent Election Commission on Sunday. -- The commission warned that these early results, accounting for 10 percent of the votes cast in 26 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, could well change as tabulating continued over the coming weeks. The votes will be fully counted by April 24, and a runoff election would be held no sooner than May 28, officials have said. --- The results could well be affected, possibly significantly, by widespread fraud at the polls. The election complaints commission said on Sunday that it had received so many serious fraud complaints that it might have to extend the time needed to adjudicate them. The commission said 870 incidents of fraud had been classified as serious enough to affect the outcome of the April 5 election, more than the 815 recorded in 2009. -- The early results prompted an outcry from the six candidates who did not rank among the top two. After meeting privately to discuss the figures, they issued a joint statement rejecting the partial results as premature, and described the election commission’s decision to release them as an “unforgivable crime.” --- Later, the campaign of Zalmay Rassoul, a former foreign minister who was believed to have the quiet support of President Hamid Karzai, issued a separate, and far milder, statement calling on the commission to “transparently distinguish valid votes from fraudulent ballots and not compromise the actual votes of the Afghan people.” --- With about half a million votes counted, Mr. Abdullah was leading with 212,312, or 41.9 percent of the total, followed by Mr. Ghani with 190,561, or 37.6 percent. Mr. Rassoul had 9.8 percent, and Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf, a warlord and former member of Parliament, had 5.1 percent. -- Ahmad Yousuf Nuristani, the head of the election commission, warned that “these results are changeable — it is possible that one candidate is the front-runner in today’s announcement but the next news conference may be another candidate as the front-runner.” -- In addition, some votes may be disallowed. “We are investigating fraudulent votes very carefully, and there’s a strong possibility that some of the vote will be disqualified,” Mr. Nuristani said. --- Even before the results were in, the apparent losing candidates were negotiating with Mr. Abdullah in an effort to form coalitions in a runoff. -- Mr. Ghani’s and Mr. Abdullah’s campaigns each had confidently predicted that it would win at least 50 percent of the vote in the first round. -- After the results were announced, Mr. Abdullah seemed in no mood to start celebrating, despite being the front-runner. “It’s the beginning of the counting process,” he said at his house and campaign headquarters. “Whether the remaining part of the process works in a transparent and fair manner remains to be seen.” -- Mr. Abdullah and President Karzai met on Thursday to discuss the election. “He said that whatever the outcome, the winner will be congratulated by him,” Mr. Abdullah said. - More, NYTimes, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/world/asia/partial-afghan-election-results-show-runoff-likely.html?hp&_r=0