‘People in and outside govt must be probed’

By Anwar Iqbal

WASHINGTON, Jan 5: People within and outside the government must be held accountable for the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, says Asif Ali Zardari.

In an article published in The Washington Post on Saturday, PPP’s co-chairman reiterated his demand for a UN-led probe into Ms Bhutto’s death.

“I call on the United Nations to commence a thorough investigation of the circumstances, facts and cover-up of my wife’s murder,” he wrote.

“Her murder does not end her vision and must not be allowed to empower her assassins.” The investigation, he said, should be modelled on the probe into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri.

“And I call on the friends of democracy in the West, in particular the United States and Britain, to endorse the call for such an independent investigation.”

Mr Zardari said an investigation conducted by the government of Pakistan would have no credibility, in the country or anywhere else.

“One does not put the fox in charge of the henhouse,” he wrote.

He claimed that Ms Bhutto was assassinated to weaken the case for a democratic government in Pakistan.

Recalling his wife’s tenure as prime minister, Mr Zardari said the military used to intervene into her administration “and a treacherous intelligence network; a fragile coalition government; and a presidential sword of Damocles always threatened to dismiss her government.”

Mr Zardari claimed that the government postponed the elections not because of logistical problems, but because of the fear that the “King’s Party” would lose and the Pakistan People’s Party and other pro-democracy parties would have garnered a majority.

Democracy in Pakistan can be saved, and extremism and fanaticism contained, only if the elections, when they are held, are free, fair and credible, he said.

To ensure the fairness of the electoral process, Mr Zardari suggested that: (1) the elections are held under a new, neutral caretaker government, free of cronies from Mr Musharraf’s party; (2) supervised by an independent and autonomous election commission formed in consultation with the major political parties; (3) monitored by trained international observers who have unfettered access to all polling stations as well as the right to conduct exit polling to verify results; (4) covered by electronic and print media with the freedoms they had before martial law was imposed on Nov. 3; and (5) arbitrated by an independent judiciary as provided for in the constitution. In addition, all political activists, lawyers and judges detained since Nov 3 must be released.

Mr Zardari said he would work with his son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and would protect him (Bilawal) to the extent possible in the trying times ahead.

He recalled that even before Ms Bhutto’s first term as prime minister, the intelligence agencies had started working to “discredit her, targeting me and several of her friends.”

He claimed it were people hired by the intelligence agencies who gave him the name of “Mr Ten Percent,” adding: “The names of her friends abroad were besmirched with ridiculous charges that they headed the nonexistent Indo-Zionist lobby.”

Mr Zardari said that such a campaign of character assassination was perhaps the first institutional application of the politics of personal destruction.