Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Hamid Karzai will serve a second term as Afghanistan’s president after election challenger Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, dropped out of a runoff vote that was scheduled for Nov. 7, the Independent Election Commission said in Kabul.

Consistent “with the high interest of the Afghan people and to prevent uncertainty and a lot of challenges to stability and security,” the commission “declares Hamid Karzai as the next president of Afghanistan.” The Aug. 20 first round was marred by fraud.

Commission officials said in a statement televised live from Kabul today that after Abdullah withdrew they reached a decision by consensus to underpin the country’s security.

“Afghanistan now needs new and urgent measures for tackling corruption, strengthening local government and reaching out to all parts of Afghan society,” U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in the House of Commons today. He said he’d spoken to Karzai and urged that the Afghan people should be given “a real stake in their future,” he said.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon had also congratulated Karzai, a spokesman for Karzai’s office said in an e-mail.

A “free and fair” vote in the planned Nov. 7 ballot would not have been possible, Abdullah told reporters yesterday. “The Afghan people deserve a better election,” he said.

U.S. Support

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement yesterday that the U.S. “will support the next president” of Afghanistan.

Abdullah’s pullout won’t harm Karzai’s legitimacy, Clinton told reporters Oct. 31 during a visit to Jerusalem. Karzai’s submission to a second round of voting “bestowed legitimacy from that moment forward, and Dr. Abdullah’s decision does not in any way take away from that,” she said.

Abdullah’s withdrawal “is a big mistake that takes away the last chance for Afghan people” to have a voice in choosing their government, said Mir Ahmad Joyenda, an Afghan legislator and head of the Foundation for Culture and Civil Society.

Karzai, 51, has lost political legitimacy since his first election as president in 2004, and can only regain it “by changing his government and removing the warlords and mafias that he has joined with,” Joyenda said by phone.

In the August vote, Abdullah won 27 percent to 48 percent for Karzai, according to amended results issued last month by election officials.

Votes Invalidated

A UN-backed anti-fraud commission last month invalidated more than 1 million votes, most of them for Karzai, reducing his vote tally to less than 50 percent of the total and forcing him into a runoff.

In 2009, 281 U.S. military personnel have been killed in Afghanistan, a rate more than double last year’s record high, according to a count by the private monitoring group iCasualties.org. President Barack Obama is deciding whether to raise the U.S. troop commitment in the eight-year-old war beyond the 68,000 now there.

Abdullah, who was born in 1960, said yesterday there is “no doubt” that more U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces are needed to suppress the Taliban and stabilize his nation, adding that the effort must not just be military.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ali Sheikholeslami in London at alis2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 2, 2009 12:00 EST