Slain former Pakistan Premier Benazir Bhutto's party served a 48-hour ultimatum to the government to approach the United Nations to probe her assassination.
LARKANA: Slain former Pakistan Premier Benazir Bhutto's party on Thursday served a 48-hour ultimatum to the government to approach the United Nations to probe her assassination, failing which it would ask the world body to take suo motu action in the matter.
Unveiling a draft petition prepared by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) lawyers seeking a UN-led inquiry into Bhutto's killing, her husband and party co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari said the PPP was not satisfied with the probe being conducted into the assassination by Pakistani security agencies with the help of Britain's Scotland Yard.
If the government did not approach the UN within 48 hours to seek a probe on the lines of the world body's inquiry into the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, the PPP would ask the UN to take suo motu action, he said.
"I appeal to the people and governments of the world and to the friends of democracy across the world to help us, to use their influence on the government of Pakistan to send this letter and get this commission (set up to probe Bhutto's killing)," Zardari told a news conference in Bhutto's ancestral home in Naudero village.
The Pakistan government has already ruled out any UN-led inquiry into Bhutto's assassination in Rawalpindi on December 27. Bowing to pressure from the PPP and other quarters, President Pervez Musharraf last week sought help from the Scotland Yard to assist in the probe into her killing.
Farooq Naek, the lawyer who led the PPP team that drafted the petition, said Bhutto would not have been assassinated if Pakistan's security services had provided her adequate protection.
Zardari also pointed out that the "crime scene was not preserved" and instead it was washed within hours.
Different claims were made by the government about the cause of Bhutto's death and the regime "wants to confuse the people instead of presenting a clear picture", he said.
"Mohtarma Bhutto has written her FIR from the grave. She wrote letters to the government (about threats to her life), those letters are on record. This cannot be changed, we have endorsed what she had said," Zardari said.
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