One of two candidates competing to succeed Afghan leader Hamid Karzai yesterday threatened to pull out of a UN-backed audit of a disputed presidential election.

The investigation is part of a US-brokered deal between presidential candidates Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, both of whom claim to have won the election that was hoped would usher in Afghanistan’s first democratic transfer of power.

The crisis over the outcome of the vote has raised the spectre of another round of war in Afghanistan, already torn apart by decades of fighting.

Yesterday, Abdullah’s team said the United Nations had until today to accept their demands to widen the criteria for identifying and discarding ballots deemed fraudulent from a June run-off vote.

“If our demands are not taken into account we will not recognise the legitimacy of the process,” said Abdullah’s spokesman, Mujib Rahman Rahimi.

Abdullah’s supporters think that the more fraudulent votes are thrown out, the more likely he is to win.

Rahimi said if the audit went ahead without accepting Abdullah’s demands, his camp would not recognise any future government as legitimate – a dangerous prospect likely to deepen ethnic and political divisions.

Afghanistan was plunged into turmoil in April when Abdullah, a former foreign minister, led after a first-round vote but failed to secure an outright majority.

He trailed behind former finance minister Ghani in the June run-off, according to preliminary figures, and has since rejected the outcome, accusing Ghani’s team of rigging the vote with Karzai’s help – an accusation both Ghani and Karzai have rejected.

The crisis comes at a time of much anxiety in Afghanistan as the United States, Kabul’s biggest aid donor, and other Nato nations withdraw their troops after nearly 13 years of fighting Taliban insurgents.

Interminable chaos as Western forces pull out would be a huge embarrassment for those countries which have spent billions of dollars and lost about 3,500 soldiers in a bid to bring peace and stability.

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