A panel investigating the Afghan presidential elections says voting irregularities were not enough to affect the final outcome. Officials say that paves the way for incumbent president Hamid Karzai to be declared the winner. One election official, Sultan Baheen, has already told the AFP news agency that "Karzai is the winner". The commission is expected to formally announce the result later on Wednesday. Mr Karzai won 55% of the vote. But there were numerous complaints, many of them over supposedly indelible ink used to prevent people voting more than once. A three-member United Nations panel was set up specifically to examine the complaints, many made by candidates opposing President Karzai who had even threatened not to recognise the result. The panel has now submitted its report to the JEMB made up of UN and Afghan officials. "There were shortcomings ... but they could not have materially affected the overall result," the panel's report concluded. President Karzai's main rival, Yunus Qanooni, has already accepted defeat. **Violence free*** Large numbers of Afghans turned out for the country's first ever presidential elections which took place last month. The election process was largely free of the violence threatened by the country's hard-line former Taliban rulers. But three foreign poll workers were abducted by armed men in Kabul last week. A militant group which claims to be holding the three people - Annetta Flanigan from the UK, Filipino Angelito Nayan, and Kosovan Shqipe Habibi - has threatened to kill them if their demand to free prisoners held in Afghan jails and Guantanamo bay are not met. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Hamid Karzai. (AP)