Kabul  - The campaign for the Afghan presidential runoff to be held in two weeks officially began Saturday, the Independent Election Commission said.

"The candidates may continue their campaigns until 48 hours before election day," commission spokesman Noor Mohammad Noor said.

The incumbent, Hamid Karzai, bowed to intense pressure from the United States and other Western supporters of his government to allow the two-man November 7 runoff after a UN-led fraud investigation team found about 1 million ballots, or a third of all ballots cast for Karzai during the first round of voting on August 20, were fabricated.

Throwing out those votes brought Karzai under the majority of ballots he needed to win in the first round of the election.

In the voting next month, Karzai is to face his top challenger from the August voting, his former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, who had previously accused both the incumbent and the Independent Election Commission of engineering the fraud.

Officials from the United Nations and the commission have vowed to put in place measures, including firing more than half of the voting coordinators, to avoid a repeat of the election fraud.

A group of parliamentarians warned Thursday, however, that the fraud would be repeated, including the large-scale stuffing of ballot boxes, unless there is a change in the leadership of the election commission. The six-member commission was appointed by Karzai and is widely accused of being biased in favour of the president.

A spokesman for Abdullah's camp has also threatened that his candidate might pull out of the elections if top commission members were not replaced.

While the commission has said it already had began dispatching election kits to the country's 34 provinces by trucks, helicopters and donkeys, there were mixed feeling among Afghans about daunting obstacles that could disrupt the second round of the election.

Some Afghans and Western officials said they hope the fresh vote could restore the credibility of the polls and undo the election stigma. Others said they fear the lack of assurance of transparency and security of the new polls would keep a large number of voters from polling stations and lead to a lower turnout than the 38 per cent in the first round.

Taliban insurgents conducted more attacks on August 20 than any other day since the ouster of their regime in late 2001, and they cut off the ink-stained fingers of voters after the polling day. The rebel group is adamant to disrupt any process supported by the United States and its allies in the country. (dpa)