Pakistan to seek international help in Bhutto probe
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - President Pervez Musharraf will announce he is seeking international help in an investigation into the assassination of Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, a close aide said on Wednesday.
Musharraf, in a televised address to the nation due at 8 p.m. (10:00 a.m. EST), would also appeal for calm ahead of an election that was due on January 8 but will be delayed for several weeks. The Election Commission will announce a new date for the poll before Musharraf's address.
Pakistan has been under pressure from the United States and elsewhere, as well as Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), to accept an outside investigation.
Forensic experts believe that much of the evidence has been lost in the clean-up operation after the gun-and-bomb attack that killed Bhutto in the garrison town of Rawalpindi last Thursday as she left a rally.
"We are going to ask for an international investigation into her death," the aide told Reuters.
Deep skepticism among ordinary Pakistanis over the conduct of the investigation was exacerbated by the Interior Ministry's assertion that Bhutto was killed when she smashed her head against a sunroof lever.
But her aides said they saw the bullet wounds and television images showed a gunman firing from close range.
Authorities published on Wednesday photographs of a severed human head and two men standing in a crowd moments before Benazir Bhutto was killed and offered a reward for their identification.
One picture shows a clean-shaven young man wearing sun glasses, a white shirt and dark waist coat. Behind him stands a man with a white shawl over his head, who a television station said was believed to be the bomber.
Later pictures and video footage have shown the young man firing a pistol at Bhutto as she left the rally in Rawalpindi standing up through the sunroof of her land cruiser to wave to supporters.
Bhutto's PPP wants the election to go ahead on time to capitalize on a wave of sympathy.
The presidential aide said the decision to delay the vote was due to logistical problems, notably the destruction of polling stations during the violence that erupted after Bhutto's assassination.
The aide denied any delay would minimize sympathy for the PPP or allow the backlash against the government to die down.
He said the PPP was still reaping support generated by the judicial murder of Benazir's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's first popularly elected prime minister, who was hanged in 1979 after being overthrown by General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq.
"How can we expect this wave of sympathy to pass in just a few weeks?" he said.
While the government has made al Qaeda and its Pakistani cohorts its prime suspects, the country is awash with conspiracy theories suggesting Bhutto could have been killed by political enemies with friends in the intelligence agencies.
(Reporting by Sheree Sardar; writing by Simon Cameron-Moore; editing by David Fogarty)
