KABUL - Hamid Karzai was set on Wednesday to become Afghanistan's first popularly elected leader, with vote-counting in the country's landmark election completed and the US-backed interim leader holding a comfortable majority. His victory and a fresh five-year term could take days to confirm, but Karzai already was under pressure to put the squeeze on the country's powerful warlords and tackle a narcotics industry threatening to overwhelm one of the world's poorest nations.
Officials declared the vote-count complete on Tuesday, giving some 1,500 weary staff at eight counting centers a well-earned rest in the middle of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. Investigators were still examining about 100 suspect ballot boxes, but the election's chief technical officer said the count was effectively "over and done" with only "dribs and drabs" of ballots left to approve. "It's really nothing that can affect the outcome," David Avery told The Associated Press.
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