Pakistan sticks to "lever" position on Bhutto death

By Robert Birsel

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Despite mounting disbelief, Pakistan's government stuck to its position on Tuesday that Benazir Bhutto was killed when she cracked her skull on the lever on a sunroof of her car during a gun and bomb attack.

The opposition leader's party says she was shot, and most Pakistanis agree.

Video footage surfaced on Monday showing a clean-cut young man firing a pistol at Bhutto from a distance of about 10 feet , her white shawl appearing to move, perhaps as a bullet struck, and her dropping back into the armored vehicle.

The raging controversy about exactly how she was killed as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi last Thursday has virtually eclipsed the question of who was behind the attack.

Just over 24 hours after Bhutto's death the Interior Ministry said three shots had been fired moments before a suicide bomber struck but neither bullets nor blast fragments had killed her.

The ministry's spokesman said that Bhutto had been killed when she ducked, the explosion forced her head against a lever jutting from the sunroof, and the blow fractured her skull.

Ministers of the caretaker government met senior editors on Monday and apologized for the "crude" way the Interior Ministry spokesman had announced the government conclusion.

But caretaker Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz said the government was not changing its stance.

"His remarks were a little crude (but) there is no change in the factual position," that Bhutto's head struck the lever, Nawaz told Reuters.

"That is what the present facts are indicating but maybe tomorrow something new will come up once the investigation people get additional facts," he said.

Asked about the video footage showing the man shooting at Bhutto, he said: "The investigation would consider this also."

NO AUTOPSY

While the bomb blast moments later killed more than 20 people, none of Bhutto's companions inside her vehicle was hurt.

The controversy about how she actually died has only fuelled conspiracy theories in a country where many people see the hand of feared security agencies or powerful foreign countries behind virtually every political crisis.

The government has blamed an al Qaeda-linked militant based on the Afghan border, Baitullah Mehsud, for the attack but many Pakistanis believe Bhutto's old enemies, perhaps from within the powerful security agencies, were involved.