Audio Recording Suggests Fraud In Afghan Elections

Ismail Khan

The Afghan election commission says it is investigating allegations that a top government official from western Afghanistan -- the powerful former Herat Province Governor Ismail Khan -- pressured an election worker to rig the results of the country's recent parliamentary ballot.

Noor Mohammed Noor, a spokesman for the Independent Election Commission, says the commission has received an audio recording of a telephone conversation that purportedly is between an election worker in Kabul and Ismail Khan, currently the Afghan minister of energy and water.

In the recording -- first broadcast on Afghan television -- the election worker is instructed to make more than a dozen changes to the list of winning parliamentary candidates in Herat Province.

A spokesman for Ismail Khan declined to comment.

compiled from agency reports