MOSCOW, August 2 (RIA Novosti) - An audit of the Afghan presidential election, scheduled for early Saturday, has again hit a snag as observers from candidate Abdullah Abdullah failed to appear for the recounting process, local media reported.
In a statement, issued earlier in the day, Abdullah’s representatives said they did not show up for the audit, pending a final agreement of the UN on disqualification of fraudulent ballots.
Candidate Abdullah insists the entire box should be disqualified if some of the votes in it are found invalid, whereas the UN wants to discard individual votes.
The country's Independent Election Commission (IEC) expects the audit to resume within the next 24 hours.
Preliminary results for the Afghanistan elections were released on July 7 showing former finance minister Ashraf Ghani with 56 percent of the votes. Presidential contender, Abdullah Abdullah, a Taliban resistance fighter, claimed there was fraud and called the results «a coup against the people’s votes."
During his visit to Kabul last month, US Secretary of State John Kerry brokered a deal, paving the way for a full audit of votes. The process, however, has already been suspended several times.
Meanwhile, on August 2 a new president was supposed to be inaugurated in Afghanistan. No new date has been set yet.
