'It sounds like a joke, but it is a tragic joke which cost Afghanistan, and which cost the future of this country,' he said, calling on IEC to take out those polling stations from the partial results.

The election body rejected Abdullah's claimed, saying 'The IEC has made strenuous efforts to prevent any attempts of fraud with full impartiality and without considering the position of the concerned authority, candidate, supporter governmental official or IEC staff.'

Najafi said that the IEC threw out results from 447 out of more than 26,000 polling sites because of allegations of fraud, but did not say that how many of the votes were affected.

The UN-backed Election Complaints Commission has received some 2,300 complaints of voting irregularities, of which some 700 were labelled as 'Category A,' serious enough to affect the result of the August 20 vote.

'If the complaints are dealt with, if these issues are being addressed, I see no way that President Karzai can keep the lead that he has today. At least it will go to the second round,' Abdullah said.

The IEC also said on Sunday that a provision final result would be delayed from Monday, which was initially scheduled, to later in the week. The final certified result will not be available before Sep 17.