Aides: Bhutto was planning to expose poll rigging plans

TURBULENT NEIGHBOURHOOD

On the day she was assassinated, former Pakistan premier Benazir Bhutto was scheduled to meet two senior US lawmakers to hand over a dossier accusing the ISI and Election Commission officials of rigging the upcoming parliamentary polls, her party officials said.

Faratullah Babar, a spokesman of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), said she was planning to hand over the dossier to Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Patrick Kennedy, a member of the US House of Representatives from Rhode Island, on the evening of December 27, the day she was murdered.

"Yes, she was supposed to hand over the dossier to the two lawmakers she was going to meet over dinner," he told PTI.

Babar, a close aide of Bhutto, said the dossier, which he helped prepare, contained the details about how the Musharraf regime was "planning to rig" the general election scheduled for January 8.

When asked was their any involvement of the spy agencies in the alleged rigging plans, he said "yes". However, he did not give details.

Latif Khosa, another trusted aide of Bhutto, also claimed that he prepared the 160-page document which Bhutto was supposed to hand over to the US lawmakers.

Khosa alleged that ISI and Election Commission officials were involved in the plans to rig the polls, adding the dossier contained details about "fake ballots" and "intimidation" of PPP candidates.

He claimed that more than 100 candidates of PML-Q, the party which backs President Pervez Musharraf, were going to get 25,000 "pre-stamped" ballot papers, apparently in Punjab and the places where the polls could be close.

He alleged that the spy agencies were planning to use a supercomputer to hack into the Election Commission's computers.

Khosa also claimed that Election Commission officials had left out a large number of voters' names from the list of the people eligible to cast their ballot.

Earlier, Senior PPP official Sarfraz Ali Lashari told The Times daily of London that the dossier contained information that ISI was allegedly using some of the $10 billion of American aid to run a covert election operation from a safe house in a central district of Islamabad.

According to the official, who works in PPP's election monitoring cell, the operation's aim was to undermine Bhutto's party and ensure victory for PML-Q.

In an interview to CNN-IBN, Bhutto's husband Asif Zardari said she was assassinated because she was planning to expose an ISI plot to rig the elections. "Yes, I am confirming that," Zardari said when asked about a media report that Bhutto was killed as she was planning to expose an ISI plot to rig the elections.

He said Bhutto "has been exposing and talking about the rigging mechanism which is part of this cartel government. And the cartel league is part and parcel of the conspiracy."

Zardari said Bhutto has already named some people in a letter to President Pervez Musharraf who she felt threatened from and has left another letter that the party was considering.