Bhutto's party considers election withdrawal

UP IN ARMS: Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of slain Pakistan's former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, offering prayers in Naudero as Pakistan's political future hung in the balance. (AFP)

Pakistan's political future hung in the balance with Benazir Bhutto's party deciding whether to pull out of planned elections amid an acrimonious dispute over how she was killed.

Her husband and top party officials were also expected to name a successor as head of the country's largest opposition party, with some tipping Bhutto's 19-year-old student son as heir-apparent.

Close Bhutto aide Sherry Rehman told newswire AFP that was "unlikely," at least for the time being.

"He is not very keen to enter the political arena here. He is young, he is going back to study - for God's sake he is barely 20 years old," she said.

Other party officials however insist Bilawal remains the frontrunner, and that if he is chosen, an advisory council led by Bhutto's widower Asif Zardari may lead the party until he finishes at Britain's Oxford University.

Bhutto, a two-time former premier, was slain Thursday in a gun and suicide bomb attack at a campaign rally, the latest member of her political dynasty to meet a violent death after her father and two brothers.

It sparked a wave of unrest as demonstrators fought running street battles with police and torched hundreds of banks, shops, offices, railway stations, trains and vehicles.

The violence has left at least 38 people dead and dozens injured and damage estimated by the interior ministry at tens of millions of dollars.

President Pervez Musharraf has ordered security chiefs to take firm action against rioters, and officials say the situation has now started to ease.

Any decision by Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) to pull out of the January 8 parliamentary vote would render it meaningless, with her chief rival Nawaz Sharif having earlier announced his own boycott.

"It will be almost impossible for the party to go against her wishes," said political analyst and columnist Shafqat Mahmood.

The meeting "will determine whether the elections will be held on January 8 or not', Mahmood told AFP.

"It will also determine what they think about the investigation" into her death. "Their verdict will be the verdict that the world will accept."

Pakistan's electoral commission, which has convened an urgent meeting for Monday, hinted Saturday it may delay the vote as the circumstances of Bhutto's death and ensuing unrest had "adversely affected" conditions.

It said preparations for the election had been thrown into chaos as some commission offices had been destroyed, voter lists "reduced to ashes" and one official killed.

The anger has been partly fuelled by searing controversy over the slaying, with the government version - that she smashed her head on the lever of a car sunroof during the attack - roundly dismissed by her supporters.

The interior ministry insists she had no gunshot or shrapnel wounds and has accused Al-Qaeda, citing what it was an intercepted call from the group's top leader in Pakistan.

Rehman, who was involved in washing Bhutto's body for burial, said earlier that was "ridiculous, dangerous nonsense".

Party officials say she was shot before the suicide attacker blew himself up, matching early accounts of the carnage that left around 20 people dead at the rally in the northern city of Rawalpindi.

"There was a bullet wound I saw that went in from the back of her head and came out the other side," Rehman told AFP.

More details came from Safdar Abbassi, a senior political adviser to Bhutto who was sitting behind her in the vehicle at the time of the attack.

"All of a sudden there was the sound of firing," he told Britain's Sunday Telegraph. "We thought she had ducked in but she had not, she had fallen down. She did not say a single word...

"We saw the blood: the blood was everywhere, on her neck and on her clothes and we realised she was hit."

Bhutto was a strong critic of Al-Qaeda-linked militants blamed for scores of bombings in Pakistan, and had received death threats.

However she had also accused elements in the intelligence services of being involved in a suicide attack on a rally in October that left 139 dead, which she only narrowly escaped.

The White House, which regards Pakistan as on the front line of the fight against Islamic extremism, appeared to pull back from its earlier call for the election to go ahead as planned.

"The elections should be free and fair," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said, urging a through probe into her death. "But as for the timing, this will be something that the Pakistani authorities will have to determine."

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