KABUL, Afghanistan - Powerful warlords, a former Taliban commander and women's activists were among the front-runners as vote counting drew to a close Tuesday in Afghanistan's first parliamentary elections in more than 30 years.
Preliminary results will be announced starting today or Thursday and in phases, in the event of unrest, officials said. Losing candidates are expected to bombard election authorities with complaints and accusations of cheating. Final certified results are due Oct. 22.
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a former guerrilla leader and arch conservative suspected of having had links with al-Qaida, is set to win a seat in Kabul.
Hazrat Ali, a former provincial police chief accused of ties to illegal armed groups is leading in eastern Nangahar province. He and his militia were used by U.S. forces to hunt Taliban and al-Qaida.
Among the expected winners is 27-year-old Malalai Joya, a women's rights worker, who rose to prominence for daring to denounce powerful warlords at a post-Taliban constitutional convention two years ago.
Suspected Taliban insurgents who failed to stop 6.8-million Afghans from voting Sept. 18 resumed attacks this week. A bomb at a Afghan-Pakistan border crossing Tuesday killed three people - a women and two boys - and wounded 20 others.
TALIBAN SPOKESMAN ARRESTED: Mullah Hakim Latifi, the self-proclaimed Taliban spokesman known for changing his phone number weekly and making wild claims about purported Taliban attacks, has been arrested in Pakistan, officials said.
Latifi, who has served as a roving one-man Taliban press secretary for almost two years, was captured in Baluchistan province, just over the border from southern Afghanistan, Pakistan government spokesman Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told reporters in Islamabad.
Latifi was not a prominent figure in the Taliban when the Islamic militia was in power but became a media contact after its ouster.
Panel identifies 17,000 with role in massacre
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina - A Bosnian Serb commission said Tuesday it has identified 17,074 of the 19,473 people it said participated directly and indirectly in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the worst slaughter of civilians in Europe since World War II.
The Special Bosnian Serb Government Working Group, which has been compiling the report since 2003, said the names would not be released publicly but would be turned over to the state prosecutor's office for review and possible charges.
The commission said it submitted the report to the office of Bosnia's top international official, Paddy Ashdown, who requested it as part of efforts to bring to justice those responsible for the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys - one of the worst atrocities in Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
MASS GRAVE FOUND: Forensic experts have recovered the remains of 213 victims of Europe's worst massacre since World War II, an official said Tuesday. The mass grave in the northeastern Bosnia village of Liplje has so far been found to contain "212 incomplete (bodies) and one complete body," said Murat Hurtic, the head of the forensic team.
Communist chief assails calls for Lenin's burial
MOSCOW - Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov on Tuesday warned the Kremlin against making plans to bury the embalmed body of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, denouncing such intention as "irresponsible and provocative."
In what appeared to be the Kremlin's attempt to gauge public reaction to the divisive issue, Georgy Poltavchenko, a regional envoy of President Vladimir Putin, said last week that Lenin's body should be buried in a cemetery along with the remains of other Bolshevik dignitaries.
Several senior lawmakers in the Kremlin-controlled Parliament followed, proposing to quickly bury Lenin's body, which lies in state in a red marble mausoleum on Red Square. Deputy Parliament speaker Lyubob Sliska said Monday that Lenin's body could be laid to rest as early as January.
Zyuganov said in a statement posted on his party's Web site that the call for Lenin's burial clearly had the Kremlin's blessing, and denounced it as "sacrilegious ... irresponsible and provocative."
"It defies the nation's history and common sense," Zyuganov said.
