(RTTNews) - Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Friday that he expects the upcoming Afghan presidential runoff elections to have fewer irregularities than the August 20 polls, which were tainted by allegations of widespread fraud.

"It is reasonable to hope that there will be less irregularities this time for several reasons," Holbrooke said at a state department news briefing in Washington on Friday.

"One, there are only two candidates. Two, there is the experience factor. Three the international community, including the forces under General McChrystal's command, are going to go all out to help make this a success," he said.

Pointing out the NATO has more forces in Afghanistan now than it had during the August elections, Holbrooke said that he expected the security situation to be better than earlier.

The U.S. envoy said that he has contacted two international pro-democracy, namely National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, asking them to send observers to monitor the elections.

"They're trying to get up new observer missions," he said. "But I'm not going to predict what's going to happen. I don't think predicting things in Afghanistan is such a great idea."

Holbrooke stressed that his relation with Afghan President Hamid Karzai was fine, adding that he looked forward to working with Karzai if he wins the presidential runoff elections.

The 7th November presidential runoff election was brought about after UN-backed investigations found a large number of votes polled in the initial election to be fraudulent and invalidated the suspicious votes. It pits Karzai against his closet rival Abdullah Abdullah.

Though the results of the initial election indicated that Karzai secured 54.6% of the votes, the invalidation of the suspicious ballots reduced his share of the vote to under the required threshold of 50% for avoiding a runoff.

The August 20 elections were primarily held to elect the country's next president and members to provincial councils. Organized predominantly by Afghans with international troops providing security along with their Afghan counterparts, the elections were somewhat overshadowed by widespread allegations of fraud.