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Summary
Afghanistan will hold a second round of its presidential election on November 7 after incumbent Hamid Karzai failed to win a clear majority in the fraud-tainted contest, officials said Tuesday.Exactly two months on from polls that Karzai had been expected to win easily, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) confirmed that he had fallen short of the 50 percent needed to avoid a run-off against his main challenger Abdullah Abdullah. Karzai confirmed at a news conference that he would take part in the second round, calling it a step forward for democracy. This is not the right time to discuss investigations, this is the time to move forward to stability and national unity, Karzai said. He spoke alongside UN envoy Kai Eide and US Senator John Kerry, whose presence in Kabul underscored intensive Western lobbying of Karzai to resolve the weeks of political paralysis.The announcement came a day after an inquiry by a UN-backed watchdog confirmed staggering levels of fraud in the August 20 vote, declaring more than one million ballots suspect -- a quarter of the total cast. An election official confirmed that from a preliminary tally of 55 percent, Karzai's share of the first-round vote had now fallen to 49.67 percent. According to Election Commission, the new elections duration would be 14 days.
