United Nations, Sep 12 (Xinhua): UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has spoken with Afghan presidential candidates, stressing the need to agree on a government of national unity, a spokesperson said Thursday.

"Yesterday, the secretary general had separate telephone calls with both Afghan presidential candidates, Ashraf Ghani and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah," Xinhua quoted UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric as saying at a daily briefing.

In his conversations, Ban stressed the need for both of them to "abide by their public commitments and conclude the political agreement on a government of national unity".

He also said that the audit, which is currently on-going and is being supported by the UN, was "robust, comprehensive and consistent with international best practices".

The UN chief asked both of them to think of the future of Afghanistan and its people, and reassured them that the UN and the international community were united in their support of a peaceful transition in Afghanistan.

The spokesperson added that Ban also spoke to outgoing President Hamid Karzai, expressing the hope that Karzai would continue to remain involved as an elder of the country.

Afghanistan's presidential election was held April 5, and since none of the eight contenders succeeded to secure more than 50 percent of the votes, the two front-runners Abdullah and Ghani went for a run-off June 14.

The two had accepted a UN-supervised audit of nearly eight million ballots which lasted for 50 days and the audit process ended Sep 4. The announcement of updated results is expected shortly.

On Monday, Abdullah claimed victory in the election process, and suspended talks with Ghani on the formation of a national unity government. Abdullah insisted that he is the winner of the presidential elections if the genuine votes had been separated from the fake ones.