Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai was assured a majority in the country's presidential election Monday and a top foreign envoy said the poll reflected the will of the people.

With nearly 95 percent of ballots counted, Karzai already has more than half the total estimated 8.1 million votes cast - enough to avoid a runoff, even if all the remaining votes go to his 17 opponents.

But he has yet to be declared the winner, as a panel of foreign experts was still reviewing other candidates' allegations of electoral fraud. The panel was set to meet with the candidates later Monday, but does not expect to finalize its report until the end of the week, said Craig Jenness, a Canadian lawyer on the panel.

The joint United Nations-Afghan electoral commission has said it will not announce the official results of the October 9 ballot until the fraud investigations are complete.

The top European Union (EU) envoy to Afghanistan said yesterday that although there were irregularities - including problems with ink used to mark voters fingers to prevent multiple voting - they not serious enough to change the outcome.

"There were some flaws, the ink most obviously," Francesc Vendrell, the EU's special representative, told BBC radio. "But I very much doubt they would affect the actual outcome of the vote."

"The vote pretty accurately reflects what the people feel," he said.

Karzai's campaign team has said he is certain of victory in the first round of voting. He currently has 4,240,041 votes, or 55.3 percent - 39 percentage points ahead of his chief rival, former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni.

Qanooni is willing to accept the outcome, provided the panel acknowledges there were irregularities in the voting.

"For the national interest and so the country does not go into crisis, we will respect the result of the election," his spokesman Syed Hamid Noori said late on Sunday. "But we also want the fraud to be made clear."

Ethnic Hazara chieftain Mohammed Mohaqeq, running third on 11.8 percent, refused to throw in the towel. "It's too early to judge the result now," he said.

(China Daily October 26, 2004)