Pakistan awaits election decision

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani electoral officials hold an emergency meeting on Monday to decide whether to go ahead with a January poll in a nation plunged into crisis by the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

Bhutto's party chose her son and husband on Sunday to succeed her, but doubts grew about whether the parliamentary election aiming to shift Pakistan from military to civilian rule would take place as planned on Jan. 8.

Her 19-year-old son Bilawal, introduced at a news conference in Naudero in the south as Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, said the party's long struggle for democracy would avenge her death. "My mother always said, democracy is the best revenge," he said.

Bhutto's killing in a suicide attack on Thursday stoked bloodshed across the country and rage against President Pervez Musharraf, casting doubts on nuclear-armed Pakistan's stability and its transition to civilian rule.

Pakistan's stocks were expected to tumble on Monday when trading resumes after three days of mourning. The political turmoil and violence risk frightening off foreign investors and damaging the economy.

A former ruling party official said the election in Pakistan, a key U.S. ally against terrorism, was likely to be delayed for up to two months but Bhutto's party vowed to take part and another opposition party said it probably would too.

The Election Commission, which meets on Monday, said on Saturday its offices in 11 districts in Sindh province in the south of the country had been burned and voting material including electoral rolls destroyed.

Security fears in two northwestern regions also raised doubts about voting there, it said.

U.S. President George W. Bush urged Pakistanis to hold the vote but White House officials said it was up to Pakistan's authorities to determine the timing.

The U.S. State Department went further. "If there is a delay in the elections, we want to make sure a new date is named. We don't want to see an indefinite delay," said a State Department spokesman, declining to be further identified.

A promising investment story less than a year ago, Pakistan is now gripped by fears of capital flight if security worsens. The death toll from violence since Bhutto's killing has reached 47.

CALM URGED

"Despite this dangerous situation, we will go for elections, according to her will and thinking," said Bhutto's widower Asif Ali Zardari, made co-chairman of the PPP party with their son Bilawal from the Bhutto home in Naudero, southern Pakistan.

However, an official of the former ruling party backing Musharraf said: "It seems more than likely that elections will be delayed."

The party of Pakistani opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, who like Bhutto is a former prime minister, said it was likely to abandon plans to boycott the poll after the PPP decision.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said he was planning to see Musharraf in the next 48 hours.

Kouchner said he hoped to "try ... to apply pressure for the election to take place -- on what date, I don't know, it's not up to us to say." But, voicing several diplomats' fears, he added: "But elections must take place in calm conditions."

DISPUTE OVER DEATH

Zadari rejected a government explanation that his wife was killed when the force of an explosion that engulfed her bullet-proof car smashed her head into a lever on the sunroof as she ducked when shots were fired.

The PPP, which says she was killed by a gunman, has said the government must also show hard evidence al Qaeda is to blame.

Accused al Qaeda-linked militants have denied any role but others issued threats against Bhutto when she returned in October. A suicide attack on her motorcade then killed at least 139 people.

A Pakistani television channel broadcast on Sunday grainy still pictures of what it said appeared to be two men who attacked and killed Bhutto, one firing a pistol.

Bhutto had hoped to win power for a third time in the January vote though analysts expected a three-way split between her, Sharif's party and the party that backs Musharraf.

Washington had encouraged Bhutto, relatively liberal by Pakistan's standards and an opponent of Islamic militancy. She returned home from self-imposed exile in October, hoping to become prime minister for the third time.

Her death wrecked U.S. hopes of a power-sharing deal between her and Musharraf, who took power in a military coup in 1999 but left the army last month to become a civilian president.

(Additional reporting by Faisal Aziz in Naudero; Simon Gardner, Mark Bendeich and Simon Cameron-Moore in Karachi; Jeremy Pelofsky in Crawford, Texas, Charles Abbott in Washington; Anna Willard in Paris; writing by Peter Millership; Editing by Keith Weir)