Facts and figures for upcoming election

There are 18 candidates, including H.E. president Karzai, former education minister Yunus Qanooni, Abdul Rashid Dostum, and Massooda Jalal, the only female candidate.

The vote is Afghanistan's first-ever direct presidential vote and first national ballot since the fall of the Taliban.

The election is on Saturday, Oct. 9, 2004.

The polls will be open from 7 a.m. until 4 p.m. (0230 GMT to 1130 GMT).

There are 4,807 voting centers, each of which will have separate polling booths so that men and women may vote apart to respect the country's Islamic customs.

There are 21,521 voting stations within the voting centers. Of these 12,354 will be for men and 9,187 for women.

More than 16,000 domestic observers but only about 225 international monitors will be involved in overseeing the vote to guard against fraud and intimidation - a turnout which has disappointed the United Nations.

Some 10.5 million people have registered within Afghanistan, about 740,000 in Pakistan, and there are believed to be another 400,000 to 600,000 eligible voters in Iran. 41 percent of those registered in Afghanistan are women.

There are about 25 million people in Afghanistan, though there is not a reliable census since decades of ruinous war forced millions to flee. Many have since returned.

Election officials say it will take two weeks to count the vote because of the remote terrain and the fact that this is the first experience with democratic votes. They hope to have partial results sooner, but it remains unclear as to when a winner will be