KABUL, Afghanistan - A U.N. helicopter hauling ballots from remote villages in northeastern Afghanistan crash-landed in a snowy field today. Nobody was injured and no ballots were lost, but officials said the accident would delay vote counting from rugged Badakhshan province.

The crash was the latest snag holding up the massive task of recovering and tabulating ballots from Afghanistan's first presidential election Saturday. The tally was to begin Wednesday at the earliest, and final results were not expected until late October.

The helicopter went down at high altitude in an area known as the Wakhan corridor, which has few roads, said David Avery, chief of operations for the Joint Electoral Management Body.

"We don't think we'll be able to recover the helicopter," he said.

Chances for a conclusive result improved Monday after interim President Hamid Karzai's main challenger, ethnic Tajik candidate Yunus Qanooni, backed away from a boycott of the vote, indicating he'd accept an independent commission to investigate vote-fraud allegations.

POIANA BRASOV, Romania - Struggling to muster more troops for Afghanistan and to take on an expanded training mission in Iraq, NATO defense ministers will aim this week to advance reforms that would let the alliance mobilize faster for far-flung operations.U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to take a lead in urging more speed, particularly to get extra European troops into Afghanistan. He will huddle Wednesday and Thursday with the other ministers for NATO's first meeting in one of the seven eastern European nations that joined the alliance in April.After much prodding, NATO allies reinforced their peacekeeping mission from 6,500 troops to over 9,000 for the Afghan elections held this past weekend. Ministers in this Transylvanian resort are expected to express satisfaction with NATO's role in ensuring the election was largely peaceful.However, despite that temporary deployment, the alliance is slipping behind with plans to expand its longer term peacekeeping operation.By The Associated Press