KABUL, November 1 (RIA Novosti) - Hamid Karzai will take part in the second round of Afghanistan's presidential election despite the withdrawal of his opponent, a spokesman for the Afghan president said on Sunday.
"Hamid Karzai is very upset that Abdullah Abdullah will not participate in the second round of elections," deputy presidential spokesman Hamid Elmi told RIA Novosti.
Abdullah is Karzai's only challenger in the November 7 runoff, but the former Afghan foreign minister announced on Sunday that he would not take part due to the president's refusal to dismiss the nation's top election official and take other action to prevent fraud.
"We don't want to boycott, but Mr. Karzai has not accepted any conditions, so he left us with no other choice," a member of Abdullah's political team was quoted as saying.
The second round of voting was scheduled after Karzai, who was officially given 54.6% of the first-round vote, bowed to international pressure and accepted the findings of the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission, which said the election was tainted by wide-scale fraud and no candidate had received over 50% of the vote, the threshold for automatic victory.
According to the deputy press secretary, the second round will go ahead no matter what, and Karzai will take part.
"The participation of Dr. Abdullah in the elections would be in the interests of the Afghan people," Elmi quoted Karzai as saying.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the Afghan elections would be legitimate even if Abdullah boycotted the run-off poll.
Clinton said the withdrawal of a candidate would not be "unprecedented" and would not affect the legitimacy of the vote.
