KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai was expected to announce Tuesday his acceptance of a U.N.-backed fraud audit reducing his vote in the August election to less than 50 percent, but it wasn't clear if he would consent to a deal with his chief rival to forge a national unity government and forgo a second-round runoff, U.S. officials said Monday.

Karzai was expected to make his announcement at a Kabul news conference with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass, who has been involved in an intense U.S.-led effort to pressure Karzai into dropping his objections to the United Nations-sponsored Electoral Complaints Commission's fraud audit.

As part of the full-court diplomatic press, the White House said it wouldn't consider a request by U.S. military commanders for as many as 80,000 additional troops for Afghanistan until it was convinced that Afghanistan had a credible government.

The prospect that Karzai might reject the audit, which was released Monday, had threatened to drive Afghanistan deeper into crisis as the Obama administration struggles to re-craft a war strategy to reverse the growing Taliban-led insurgency and stem the bloodiest violence in the country since the 2001 U.S. invasion.

Two U.S. officials in Washington, who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly, said that Karzai was expected to accept the audit results at a news conference with Kerry on Tuesday.

However, they said they didn't know whether he'd agreed to embrace the offer by the second-place finisher, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, to forgo a runoff and form a new unity government.

UNITY GOVERNMENT?

Abdullah told U.S. diplomats last week that he would drop out of the race if Karzai accepted the audit findings, agreed to form a national unity government that included some Abdullah allies and pledged to pursue reforms that would dilute the presidency's power, including a change to permit the popular election of provincial governors.

``We would like to see a coalition government, but it's up to him [Karzai],'' said one U.S. official. ``From our standpoint, having him respect the election process will be significant. And it speaks to the credibility of the entire process: that an executive is subject to checks and balances.''

KARZAI'S IMAGE DAMAGED

Some experts, however, were deeply skeptical of the prospects for any government led by Karzai, whose first five-year term has been marred by massive incompetence, nepotism and corruption fueled by drug smuggling and the billions of dollars in foreign reconstruction aid that's poured into one of the world's poorest nations.

The U.N.-backed Election Complaints Commission's audit released Monday stripped hundreds of thousands of voters from Karzai, confirming massive ballot box-stuffing and other malfeasance -- mostly on the Afghan leader's behalf -- in the second presidential election in the country's history.

The audit dropped Karzai's vote tally from a preliminary total of 54.6 percent to 48.3 percent, according to an analysis by Democracy International, an organization that has been observing the election on behalf of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The audit also found far lesser amounts of fraudulent votes for Abdullah, but nonetheless his final total would rise from less than 28 percent to about 31 percent.

Under Afghan law, a runoff is required if no candidate captures more than 50 percent of the vote.

KARZAI HELD FIRM

Karzai resisted the audit's findings, which were finalized late last week, apparently determined to cinch a first-round victory in order to retain the support of ethnic warlords and power barons who engineered the ballot-box stuffing on his behalf in the expectation of receiving government positions and influence.

There were fears that Karzai's opponents, mostly leaders of the sizeable ethnic minorities, would see his refusal to accept the findings as tantamount to an illegal retention of power, raising the threat of ethnic strife. Karzai is a Pashtun, the largest ethnic group, and so are most of his backers.

While Karzai appeared ready to accept the fraud audit, the crisis has done considerable damage.

The spectacle of foreign powers so deeply involved in Afghan politics has played into the hands of the Taliban, which has gained support by portraying Karzai's administration as corrupt and a puppet of the United States.

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