Taleban attacks fail to dampen Afghan enthusiasm

KABUL - Taleban fighters tried on Sunday to sabotage Afghanistan's first legislative election in decades, but voters still turned out for a ballot President Hamid Karzai said was a defining moment in the nation's struggle to rebuild.

More than a dozen attacks were launched across the southeast and two rockets were fired into a UN compound near an election centre in Kabul shortly after polls opened.

Only one rocket exploded, slightly wounding an Afghan worker, an election official said, and the joint Afghan-UN election commission said, on the whole, voting was remarkably peaceful.

"I'm so happy, I couldn't sleep last night and was watching the clock to come out to vote," said Qari Salahuddin, 21, at a polling station in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

About 12.5 million Afghans are registered to vote in the U.N.-organised $159 million (88 million pound) polls for a lower house of parliament and councils, the first legislative election since 1969.

"Calm is prevailing in most areas and voters are flowing into our polling centres in a mood of call and joy," said Peter Erben, the election commission's chief electoral officer.

About 160,000 staff are on duty at more than 6,000 polling stations in some of the most scenic and remote terrain on earth, from the desert in the south to valleys among the snow-capped Hindu Kush mountains in the north.

"I am so happy, so happy," says Khatereh Mushafiq, 18, her black veil decorated with white flowers pulled back from her beaming face as she went to vote at a girl's school in Kandahar.

"We (women) are also now taking part in the government and in society. People must take part, people must have a say."

MAKING HISTORY

The elections are part of an international plan to restore democracy in the Muslim country after the Taleban's overthrow in 2001. Karzai won presidential elections last year, the first in the nation's history.

"(It) is the day of self-determination for the Afghan people," Karzai told reporters after voting at a heavily guarded state guest house.

"That is why we are making history after 30 years of wars, interventions, occupations and misery."

Yunus Qanuni, who came second to Karzai last year and now heads an opposition bloc, criticised the exclusion of political parties from the process but still urged people to vote.

The election, which ends at 4 p.m. (12:30 p.m. British time), is expected to produce a fragmented national assembly focussing on local interests but Qanuni has vowed to challenge Karzai, who has not been involved in campaigning.

SEVEN PAGES

There were some reports of confusion over ballot papers that in some places list nearly 400 candidates, their photos and personal symbols, and run to up to seven pages. Across the country there are 5,800 candidates, all standing as individuals.

Taleban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said militants had carried out 39 attacks, including the rocket attack in Kabul.

The insurgents had vowed, but failed, to disrupt preparations for the election, which comes nearly four years after US-led troops drove the fundamentalist Islamic rulers from power.

Protecting voters are about 100,000 troops, including about 20,000 from a US-led force and 10,000 NATO-led peacekeepers.

Seven candidates and six poll workers were killed in the run-up to the vote and police said attackers threw grenades into the house of a candidate in Nangarhar province in the east overnight, wounding five of his family.

Two policemen and three insurgents were killed in an ambush near the Pakistani border and a Taleban fighter was killed in an overnight attack on a polling station.

A US military spokesman said there had been small attacks in more than a dozen areas in the southern and eastern provinces of Khost, Kandahar and Kunar.

A French soldier was killed and one seriously wounded when their vehicle hit a landmine in the south on Saturday, the Defence Ministry in Paris said.

- REUTERS