| Slain former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto's son Bilawal was today named the chairperson of her Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zardari will be the co-chairman. |
| The decision was taken at a party meeting at Bhutto's home in Larkana today where the party also decided to take part in next month's election. |
| Bilwal, who was being groomed by his mother and uses his mother's surname, was three months old when his mother first became prime minister in 1988. |
| He will be the third leader of the 40-year-old PPP, one of Pakistan's most powerful political forces. Though he was named the chairman, he will have to wait for another six years to contest an election. |
| He will follow the footsteps of his grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who founded the PPP in 1967 and served as prime minister for four years in the mid-1970s, and his mother, who took over at the age of 26 after her father was hanged by the military regime of Gen Zia-ul-Haq in 1979. Bilawal is studying at Oxford, his mother and grandfather's alma mater. |
| Meanwhile, a senior official of the former ruling party said an election due in little over a week was likely to be delayed. "It seems more than likely that elections will be delayed," Tariq Azim Khan, a senior official of the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) party, told Reuters. |
| The party backs President Pervez Musharraf and ruled until a caretaker government was set up last month. Khan said he expected a six-to-eight week postponement. |
| Pakistan's stocks are expected to tumble on Monday following the political turmoil and violence, which threaten to scare off foreign investors and damage the economy. |
| Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, financial capital and main port, has been paralysed by a spasm of street violence. Shops have been shuttered, petrol stations closed and railways attacked by angry mobs, bringing transport to a standstill. The death toll from the violence has reached 47. |
| Streets in Karachi were generally quiet and deserted on Sunday, though a disabled man was burned to death when a petrol station was set on fire. |
| The PPP has dismissed the government statement that al Qaeda killed her, saying Musharraf's embattled administration was trying to cover up its failure to protect her. |
| The party of opposition leader Nawaz Sharif said it would "review" its boycott of next month's election if the PPP decided to take part. |
| So far, the government has not announced any decision to call off or postpone the vote, but the Election Commission said it was planning an emergency meeting on Monday. |
| In another development, a close aide, who prepared Bhutto's body for burial, dismissed as "ludicrous" a government theory she died after hitting her head on a sunroof during the suicide attack. |
| A party spokesman said she was shot in the head. A Pakistani television channel broadcast on Sunday grainy still pictures of what it said appeared to be two men who attacked and killed Bhutto, one firing a pistol. |
| Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said the government's version, backed by a doctor who treated Bhutto, was based on a medical report and other evidence collected from the scene of the attack. |
| "If the PPP leadership wants, her body can be exhumed and post-mortemed. They are most welcome," he added. |
| The PPP has said the government must also show hard evidence al Qaeda is to blame. The accused al Qaeda-linked militants have denied any role, although others issued threats against Bhutto when she returned in October. A suicide attack on her motorcade then killed at least 139 people. |
| A promising investment story less than a year ago, Pakistan is now gripped by fears of capital flight if security worsens. |
| "If the situation prolongs, there will be capital outflows and we will probably see (the) Dubai market doing well because there is money flowing from Pakistan," said Shoaib Memon, chief executive of Al Falah Securities, owned by the Abu Dhai Group, one of the largest foreign investors in Pakistan. |
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