ISLAMABAD, 30 December 2007 — Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf yesterday told the armed forces to end the violence that has killed 44 people since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Thursday and the Election Commission hinted that polls slated for Jan. 8 could be postponed.
Militants meanwhile said they were in no way involved in the murder of Benazir, dismissing government claims that a leader of pro-Taleban forces in Pakistan orchestrated the suicide attack on the opposition leader.
Benazir’s aides also said they doubted that militant commander Baitullah Mehsud was behind the attack, and accused the government of a cover-up.
Three supporters of Benazir were shot dead yesterday, one by masked gunmen and two others by security forces as a mob tried to force entry into an oilfield. In a separate incident, four men were shot dead and seven others wounded in a district of the southern financial hub of Karachi, a hospital official said.
The Associated Press of Pakistan cited President Pervez Musharraf as saying elements looting and plundering should be dealt with firmly.
The killings in the southern province of Sindh, Benazir’s political stronghold, came as protesters torched shops, lorries, welfare centers and ambulances on Friday night as violence entered a third day.
The Election Commission called an emergency meeting tomorrow to discuss whether elections could be held on Jan. 8. The commission said that violence had led to the destruction of nine election offices, including the voter rolls inside, and adversely affected the printing of ballot papers, training of poll workers and other pre-election logistics.
The election is seen as a crucial step in restoring stability and bringing democracy back to this nuclear-armed nation.
Caretaker Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro said Friday the government had no immediate plans to postpone the election, despite the raging violence and the decision by Nawaz Sharif, another opposition leader, to boycott the poll.
Sharif yesterday met Benazir’s husband Asif Ali Zardari at the family home in southern Pakistan to offer his condolences. Sharif and around 50 of his party officials arrived at Naudero, Benazir’s ancestral village in Sindh province, after flying from his stronghold in the eastern city of Lahore.
Sharif said Friday that Zardari had asked him not to attend the funeral because of security fears.
The government blamed Benazir’s killing on Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants. It released a transcript Friday of a purported conversation between Mehsud and another militant, apparently discussing the assassination.
But a spokesman for Mehsud, Maulana Mohammed Umer, denied the militant was involved in the attack and dismissed the allegations as “government propaganda.”
“We strongly deny it. Baitullah Mehsud is not involved in the killing of Benazir Bhutto,” he said in a telephone call he made to The Associated Press from the tribal region of South Waziristan.
Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party accused the government of trying to frame Mehsud and also rubbished the government version of the cause of her death.
Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, Interior Ministry spokesman, said she was killed when she tried to duck back into the armored vehicle during the attack, and the shock waves from the blast smashed her head into a lever attached to the sunroof, fracturing her skull.
Benazir’s spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who was in the vehicle with her and later washed her body, disputed the government’s version. “To hear that Ms. Bhutto fell from an impact from a bump on a sunroof is absolutely rubbish. It is dangerous nonsense, because it implies there was no assassination attempt,” she told the BBC.
“There was a clear bullet wound at the back of the neck. It went in one direction and came out another,” she said. “My entire car is coated with her blood, my clothes, everybody — so she did not concuss her head against the sun roof.”
Yesterday, Cheema stood by the government’s version of events and said Benazir’s party was free to exhume her body if they wanted and conduct a post mortem — something Zardari had reportedly resisted immediately after her death.
US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton called for an independent, international investigation into Benazir’s death — perhaps by the United Nations — saying Friday there was “no reason to trust the Pakistani government.”
Cheema dismissed the suggestion. “This is not an ordinary criminal matter in which we require assistance of the international community. I think we are capable of handling it,” he said.
— Additional input from agencies
