Pakistan looks for leadership from Bhutto's heirs

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Benazir Bhutto's son will deliver a posthumous message for the slain Pakistani opposition leader and read her will on Sunday, but the 19-year-old is too young to be the leader the crisis-ridden country craves.

Pakistan is struggling to emerge from eight years of military rule at a time when al Qaeda-backed Islamist militants are threatening to destabilize the nuclear-armed state because of President Pervez Musharraf's alliance with the United States.

Elections set for January 8 could be delayed following Bhutto's assassination at a campaign rally on Thursday.

Bereft of Bhutto's charismatic leadership, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) is grief-stricken and in disarray. Bilawal represents the next generation in a dynasty whose history is entwined with Pakistan, but he is still studying law at Oxford.

For now, power within the party is likely to rest with Benazir's spouse, Asif Ali Zardari.

"For the time being, there is no Bhutto who could succeed her," Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Lahore-based analyst said.

"It's a very uncertain phase for the dynasty."

The PPP leadership is due to meet in Naudero, Bhutto's home town in southern Pakistan, on Sunday to decide the succession issue and whether to contest the looming election.

In an interview with the BBC on Saturday, Zardari was asked if he wanted to lead the party.

"It depends on the party and it depends on the will. My son will read his mother's will to the party," Zardari replied.

The choice lies between Zardari or her top aide, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, another land-owning politician. Even if the nomination went to Bilawal, tall and handsome like his mother, Zardari would be the de facto leader.

Zardari can ooze charm, and gained respect for enduring eight years in jail before being released without being convicted. However, political foes accuse him of corruption and many PPP loyalists blame him for tainting the Bhutto name.

LARGEST PARTY

Benazir's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan's first popularly elected prime minister, was hanged in 1979 by a military dictator whose policies pandered to religious conservatives, who remain a force today.

Founded in the 1960s during another period of military rule, the PPP advocated the establishment of an egalitarian democracy.

Standing for economic and social justice, the PPP quickly became the single largest party in the country, but its appeal rested with the gifted but flawed personalities of the Bhutto family.

"Everybody in the party knows that they have to stick to the legacy of Bhutto and without that legacy, they are nobody," said Najam Sethi, editor of the Daily Times and a leading political analyst.

Many PPP leaders are from the land-owning feudal class Bhutto belonged to, yet the party still represents the best hope for both progressive-minded Pakistanis and the uneducated poor yearning for democracy.

Benazir held onto a following among the masses even though she had been out of power for a decade and out of Pakistan for eight years, and despite the dismissal of her two governments in the late 1980s and 1990s amid charges of corruption and misrule.

"Benazir Bhutto was the bridge between the propertied classes in Pakistan and the poor of this country," said Karachi-based independent economist Asad Saeed.

"She was the one and only person who wanted to heal the wounds of the poor while not disturbing the privileges of the rich."

Saeed saw no one who could fill the gap left by Benazir and felt that her survivors faced a daunting task to emulate her.

"If they want to live peacefully and if they want to make something of this country, basically and paradoxically the rich and powerful of Pakistan will have to become Benazir Bhutto's themselves, or at least attempt to."

(Additional reporting by Saeed Azhar, writing by Simon Cameron-Moore)