Tehran Mayor mahmoud Ahmadinejad is assured of victory in Iran's presidential runoff, the Interior Ministry said Saturday as ballots counting entered its final stages.

According to the latest figures, Ahmadinejad has won 61.5 percent of ballots cast.

His rival Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is trailing far behind with 35.9 percent.

The decisive runoff in Iran's ninth presidential election ended late on Friday night. Some 46.8 million people were eligible to vote, with a 47 percent turnout, or around 22 millions of eligible voters.

Polling stations throughout the country were finally closed at 11 PM (18:30 GMT) yesterday night, four hours later than the scheduled time, state television reported, citing Interior Ministry announcement.

The close of polling stations was delayed at the request of many provinces where large amounts of voters could not finish their voting within the required time.

Iran's Supreme Leader Seyed Ali Khamenei cast his ballot in the capital Tehran as polling stations across the country opened at 9 AM (local time).

Iranian voters were required to choose a successor to the outgoing reformist president Mohammad Khatami between pragmatist former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and ultra-conservative Tehran mayor Mahmood Ahmadinejad.

In the first round of presidential election last Friday, Rafsanjani came first with 21 percent of the 29,317,420 valid votes, and Ahmadinejad was in second place with 19 percent.

They entered the unprecedented runoff vote as none of the seven candidates got the needed 50 percent of the votes to win an outright victory.

The first round turnout was 68 percent. 47 million Iranians are eligible to vote, half of them are aged under 25.

(Xinhua News Agency June 25, 2005)