Kabul, Sep 9 (DPA) Despite international pressure to carry out recounts, the Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC) Tuesday announced that President Hamid Karzai had achieved an absolute majority in the Aug 20 presidential election.

The UN-backed independent Election Complaints Commission (ECC) reported that there was 'clear proof' of fraud in the election, and it ordered the IEC to review votes cast in the relevant polling stations.

The IEC said the latest count showed Karzai had 54.1 percent of the vote against 28.3 percent accorded his main challenger Abdullah Abdullah, with 90 percent of the vote counted. A candidate must win at least 50 percent of the vote to avoid a run-off.

Daoud Ali Najafi, IEC chief electoral officer, told a press conference in Kabul Tuesday that the IEC would not be able to recount the ballots until it counted 100 percent of the votes from the polling stations and announced the preliminary results.

Afghan officials and Western diplomats said Karzai was under increased pressure to allow the body to exclude more 'fraudulent votes'.

Owing to mounting allegations of fraud, the IEC has excluded around 600 polling stations that accounted for more than 300,000 votes from preliminary results to be announced later this week, Najafi said.

The votes were suspicious and were sent to the ECC for adjudication, Najafi said, adding: 'The ECC will decide if they would throw it out of the final result.'

In Washington, US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said there was a good process in place for evaluating the vote and urged patience in awaiting the investigation.

'It's important that we have a transparent process here and everything is thoroughly, thoroughly investigated,' Kelly said.

'It's not going to be a matter of days or weeks,' he said, adding it 'could be a matter of months to sort out all of these allegations'.

However, an Afghan senior election official and Western diplomats told DPA Tuesday that there were more 'fraudulent votes' that have so far been tallied in partial results announced by the IEC.

Abdullah accused Karzai's camp of rigging the vote, and also accused the IEC of showing partisanship toward the incumbent.