10 October 2004	Sunday	24 Shaban 1425

ISLAMABAD, Oct 9: The first vote in Afghanistan's historic presidential election was cast by an Afghan girl in Islamabad on Saturday morning.

Polling began at 7 am under tight security, 30 minutes before it started in Afghanistan.

The 19-year-old, Moqadasa Siddiqi, became the first of 740,000 Afghans living in Pakistan, who were registered by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), to vote in the election.

"The feeling to cast the first vote is inexplicable. But I am very happy that there will be peace in Afghanistan. I hope whoever becomes our president, will be honest and that he pays a lot of attention to education. We need a good education system to rebuild our country," said Ms Siddiqi.

Meanwhile, talking to reporters, Director IOM, Out of Country Registration and Voting (OCRV) programme Peter Erben said they just had 78 days to make all the necessary preparations but they succeeded. "There are four polling stations set up in Islamabad. There are 1,657 polling stations set up countrywide, mostly in the refugee camps in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan," he said.

Feeling dissatisfied to be unable to motivate enough Afghan women on such a short call to come out and exercise their right to vote, Mr Erben said: "Given the circumstances, the IOM has been able to motivate 30 per cent of the Afghan women living in Pakistan to vote and choose their leader for the future. We could have had more women to vote."

When asked about fairness of the elections, Mr Erben said: "There could be many such allegations that the process is rigged and I am not surprised because something like this or next door to it can be expected when an event of such an importance happens. Nonetheless, with my team of 20,000 trained personnel in Pakistan and Iran, I can guarantee that voting will be fair. Investigations will be made to see why such allegations have surfaced," said the IOM representative.

Security issues had been taken very seriously, said Mr Erben adding that the government had fully supported the cause and had cooperated in every way possible to ensure that nothing went wrong.

In a briefing held later in the day, the IOM released the information that hundreds of thousands of Afghans living in Pakistan and Iran took part in the election.

According to information coming in from the field, the IOM said the voter turnout had been good, both in Pakistan and Iran.

In Pakistan, by midday, 350,000 Afghans had voted with four hours still to go before the polling centres closed.

A number of Afghans, who had registered inside Afghanistan, showed up to vote in Pakistan and were unable to cast their votes. The IOM had continuously stressed that voters had to register in Pakistan and consequently appear on the voters list in order to vote.