AFGHAN President Hamid Karzai has ruled out calling a second round of elections over fraud allegations that have cast a shadow over US deliberations on whether to send more troops.
Preliminary results from Afghanistan's second presidential election put Mr Karzai on track to defeat rival Abdullah Abdullah without a second round, but European Union observers said nearly one-quarter of votes could be fraudulent.
Asked whether he would agree to a second round to ease concerns about the election's legitimacy, Mr Karzai told CNN: "That is not in my authority to do."
"Taking it to a second round or a runoff by engineering it in that direction, that is itself fraud and not the right thing to do. It's against (the) Afghan constitution," he said. "We cannot claim a wrong and then commit another wrong in order to make a right."
Mr Karzai did not exclude inviting Mr Abdullah into a coalition government but said he would do so only to unite the country, not to respond to fraud allegations, which he insisted were false.
Senior US officials acknowledged they were in a bind over how to handle the election.
US President Barack Obama has made fighting extremism in Afghanistan a top priority and is weighing calls to again boost the US military force in the country, which is set to reach 68,000 this year.
"I would tell you that there is no question that the nature of the election in Afghanistan has complicated the picture," Defence Secretary Robert Gates said.
Mr Karzai, first installed in the wake of the US-led military operation that ousted the Taliban in 2001, enjoyed a warm relationship with former president George W. Bush, but Mr Obama has distanced himself from the Afghan leader.
Vice-President Joe Biden said that if Afghans doubted the legitimacy of Mr Karzai's government in a second term, it "makes everything considerably more difficult".
"That's why we have to follow the process to the end here," Mr Biden, who as a senator reportedly stormed out of a dinner with Mr Karzai, told CNN. "But to be honest to you, it would make this very hard to have a sustainable policy if the government with whom we're co-operating is viewed as illegitimate by the people - in this case, the people of Afghanistan. But that's not determined yet."
Echoing earlier remarks to reporters in Kabul, Mr Karzai acknowledged there might have been irregularities but insisted there was no systematic fraud.
"It's unfortunately mainly in the international community that these allegations are coming," Mr Karzai said. "I can assure you, the vote was true and fair."
His remarks came on one of the deadliest days for Western troops in Kabul. A bomber destroyed a vehicle of NATO-led forces, killing 10 Afghan civilians and six Italian soldiers.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi later said he hoped to bring home his country's 3250 troops "as soon as possible", but only in consultation with NATO allies.
Britain's main opposition Conservative Party, which leads in polls ahead of elections due next year, called for more commitment by NATO in Afghanistan and said it would consider sending more troops should it win office.
But Liam Fox, Britain's shadow defence secretary, warned in an address to a Washington think tank that any build-up would be futile without an accompanying strategy to persuade insurgents to give up violence.
"Unless we have identified a more comprehensive political solution for Afghanistan, any increase in troop members alone would merely maintain the status quo, which is arguably an increasingly dysfunctional state apparatus surrounded by a burgeoning insurgency," Mr Fox said at The Heritage Foundation.
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