AFP - Afghanistan's besieged electoral authorities said they would release full preliminary results from the country's presidential election later on Wednesday.
   
Nearly a month after going to the polls on August 20, Afghans still do not know for certain who will be their next president as allegations of fraud gather momentum.
   
President Hamid Karzai is leading the count so far with 54.3 percent, ahead of his main rival Abdullah Abdullah on 28.1 percent.
   
Electoral officials have said that hundreds of thousands of votes could be quarantined for investigations, which could take two to three weeks, delaying the announcement of the victor.
   
The winner must have 50 percent of the final tally, plus one vote.
   
In the meantime, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) plans to announce preliminary results from all polling stations, an official said.
   
"Today we will announce the preliminary results of the presidential election, based on 100 percent of the polling centres," IEC spokesman Abdul Rahim Nawakhtyar told AFP.
   
"We will also announce the turnout and other figures. All details will be included," he said.
   
Asked about investigations into allegations of vote-rigging and whether suspicious votes will be included in the tally, he said: "All I can say is that the preliminary results will be based on the qualified polling stations."
   
The UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) last week ordered that ballots from polling stations with "clear and convincing evidence" of fraud be audited and recounted before deciding whether to exclude the votes.
   
ECC chief Grant Kippen said ballots from more than 2,500 polling stations, or about 10 percent of the total, would be recounted because of fraud concerns.
   
It could take weeks to complete the process, a senior vote official said, signalling deeper political limbo as Western troops battle to fend off an increasingly lethal Taliban insurgency.
   
European Union election observers said Wednesday that 1.5 million votes cast in the elections could be fraudulent.