Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he will abide by the decision to hold a second round of elections on 7 November. The decision was announced following an audit by the United Nations-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) which found that the president had not obtained enough votes for an outright win in the 20 August election.

Although official results had given Mr Karzai nearly 55 percent of the vote, well over the 50 percent threshold, required for an outright victory, the ECC ordered that ballots from 210 polling stations be discounted. This led to Mr Karzai losing his absolute majority. The election will be a contest between President Karzai and his chief rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.

The decision has been greeted positively around the world. United States President Barack Obama said he hoped that Afghanistan would now get a government that represented the wishes of the population. France and Great Britain praised Mr Karzai for agreeing to a second round of voting. United Nations’ Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called it “an enormous challenge to make the voting transparent and trustworthy.” The Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen said that the international community must supervise the second round of voting strictly.

Photo of Hamid Karzai from Wikimedia Commons