WASHINGTON (AFP) –
Afghan President Hamid Karzai will likely emerge the winner even if his country's election authorities call a second round in contested polls, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday.
The election commission is expected to make an announcement soon on Afghanistan's second-ever presidential vote on August 20, in which Western observers allege that widespread fraud inflated Karzai's showing.
"It is likely that they will find that President Karzai got very close to the 50-plus-one percent" needed for an outright victory, Clinton told CNN.
"So I think one can conclude that the likelihood of him winning a second round is probably pretty high," she said.
The top US diplomat said she had no inside knowledge on what the election commission would announce but called for the Afghan leadership to follow its recommendations.
Clinton said the run-off could take place quickly.
"The ballots are printed and certainly some planning has been done. It could absolutely be carried out, within the next few weeks, before the snows come," she said in the interview.
Karzai has bristled at EU observers' charges that one quarter of the votes cast could be fraudulent, fueling tension between the Afghan leader and Western nations that backed him after the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban regime.
But Karzai's ambassador to Washington, Said Tayeb Jawad, said Thursday that a run-off was likely, the first time a member of the Afghan leader's inner circle has publicly acknowledged the possibility.
The election debacle comes as President Barack Obama's administration mulls sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan to battle a Taliban insurgency.
But Clinton said the possibility of a second round would not delay the decision.
"I think that we have taken into account every possible outcome as we have engaged in our strategic analysis," she said.
"I think the president is expecting to make a decision on his own timetable, when he is absolutely comfortable with what he believes is in the best interest of the United States," she said.
White House spokesman Bill Burton said separately: "Whether or not there's a runoff, and the final results, will be factored in just like everything else happening in the region into the final assessment of our strategy there."
He said the White House would stay neutral between Karzai and his main rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.
"The legitimacy of this election and of the leadership of Afghanistan is in the hands of the Afghan people," Burton told reporters on Air Force One as Obama flew to Houston, Texas.
"We don't have any favorites in this race; we're just waiting for the final results," he said.
Obama has had a noticeably cooler relationship with Karzai than former US president George W. Bush, with administration officials privately alleging corruption in the Afghan leader's ranks.
