Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has been blamed for "suppressing" the probe into the killing of his wife Benazir Bhutto, a media report said.
LONDON: Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has been blamed for "suppressing" the probe into the killing of his wife Benazir Bhutto, a media report said on Saturday.
Former Pakistan premier Bhutto was assassinated in a gun-and-suicide attack shortly after she had addressed an election rally in Rawalpindi on December 27 last year.
The report in The Times newspaper said PPP is divided over the handling of the murder of Benazir, with the investigation grounding to a halt.
Many leading PPP members accuse Zardari, who was elected President in August, of "suppressing" the probe, the influential paper said.
"It is intriguing why the Government has not even ordered any investigation into Bhutto's killing," Senator Safdar Abbasi was quoted as saying by the British daily.
General Hamid Nawaz, a former Pakistan Interior Minister, said the investigation was further complicated as Zardari did not allow a postmortem examination to be conducted on his wife.
Senior PPP leader Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Zardari, confirmed that the government was not conducting an investigation into the assassination.
We do not want to appear witch-hunting, Babar stressed.
Initial investigations under the government of the former President Pervez Musharraf blamed Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud for the assassination.
The government also invited Scotland Yard to conduct a forensic investigation. The trail has gone cold since the new government halted the investigation.
Pakistan has asked the United Nations to conduct an inquiry into the killing. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has said he hoped an inquiry would be set up in the near future.
President Zardari has hinted at the possibility of the involvement of some other country but has never elaborated.
The two-time ex-premier was killed barely two months after she returned to Pakistan from self-exile to lead PPP's campaign for the general election. She had earlier survived a suicide attack on her hours after her return home in October last year.
Amidst tight security, supporters of Bhutto's PPP, which heads the ruling coalition in Islamabad, today marked the death anniversary of Benazir.
"The tyrants and the killers have killed her but they shall never be able to kill her ideas, which drove and inspired a generation to lofty aims," her husband said in a message on the death anniversary of Bhutto, whose killers have still not been brought to justice.
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