Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah gestures during a gathering of his supporters in Kabul, July 8, 2014. Abdullah told thousands of supporters on Tuesday he was the winner of last month’s run-off election, putting himself on a collision course with his arch-rival, Ashraf Ghani.

KABUL: Presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah claimed victory on Tuesday in Afghanistan’s disputed election, blaming fraud for putting him behind in preliminary results as fears rise of instability and ethnic unrest.

Abdullah told a rally of thousands of rowdy supporters in Kabul he would fight on to win the presidency, but he called for patience from loyalists who demanded he declare a “parallel government” to rule the country.

“We are proud, we respect the votes of the people, we were the winner,” Abdullah said. “Without any doubt or hesitation, we will not accept a fraudulent result, not today, not tomorrow, never.”

Before he spoke, a huge photograph of President Hamid Karzai was ripped down from the stage — underlining the boiling anger among Abdullah’s supporters after the preliminary result in favor of poll rival Ashraf Ghani.

The election stand-off has sparked concern that protests could spiral into ethnic violence and even lead to a return to the fighting between warlords that ravaged Afghanistan during the 1992-1996 civil war.

But Abdullah called for the country to remain unified as it faces a difficult transfer of power, after
Karzai’s 13-year rule ends and as 50,000 US-led troops wind down their battle against Taleban insurgents.

“We don’t want partition of Afghanistan, we want to preserve national unity and the dignity of Afghanistan,” he said. “We don’t want civil war.”

Earlier, the United States issued a strong warning to Abdullah over reports that he would form a “parallel government” in defiance of the results from the run-off — which said Ghani took 56.4 percent of the vote to Abdullah’s 43.5 percent.

Any power grab would cost the country international aid, Washington said.

In the eight-man first-round election on April 5, Abdullah was far ahead with 45 percent against Ghani’s 31.6 percent.

Karzai, who is constitutionally barred from a third term in office, has stayed publicly neutral in the lengthy election, but Abdullah supporters accuse him of fixing the vote in Ghani’s favor.

The outgoing president welcomed the result announcements and said the winner would be known only “after complaints are addressed and genuine votes separated.”

He urged both candidate to cooperate with the process.

Independent Election Commission head Ahmad Yusuf Nuristani admitted on Monday there had been fraud by the security forces and senior government officials.

“A change in the result is possible,” Nuristani said, ahead of the final result due on about July 24.

After last-minute talks, the two campaigns eventually failed to agree on the extent of a proposed fraud probe to check thousands of the most suspicious ballot boxes.

Ghani, who says he won fairly, is due to speak to reporters later Tuesday.

Abdullah said he had spoken to US President Barack Obama about the crisis, and that US Secretary of State John Kerry was due to visit Kabul on Friday.

“The United States expects Afghan electoral institutions to conduct a full and thorough review of all reasonable allegations of irregularities,” Kerry said in a statement from Washington.

“Any action to take power by extra-legal means will cost Afghanistan the financial and security support of the United States and the international community.”

Afghanistan’s international backers have lobbied hard to try to ensure a smooth election process, but the contested outcome realized their worst fears and risks setting back gains made since the fall of the Taleban in 2001.

The insurgents, who see the election as a US plot to control Afghanistan, killed 16 people including four NATO soldiers in a suicide bombing north of Kabul on Tuesday.

The UN mission in Afghanistan has highlighted the risk of political tensions spilling over into tribal violence, though street protests have so far been peaceful.

Ghani attracts much of his support from the Pashtun tribes of the south and east, while Abdullah’s loyalists are Tajiks and other northern Afghan groups — echoing the ethnic divisions of the civil war.
Karzai is due to hand over power at an inauguration ceremony on August 2.

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