Bhutto Assassination: PPP wants UN inquiry

Slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan's People Party (PPP) has said it will co-operate with the Scotland Yard team probing the assassination of their leader but stuck to its demand for a UN inquiry.

"The Scotland Yard team will only carry out a police-type investigation but we stick to our demand for probing the conspiracy of assassination of Benazir Bhutto through the United Nation Commission," party's information secretary Sheery Rahman told The News.

She said the party would co-operate with the Scotland Yard team, and rubbished claims that Bhutto was responsible for her death as she did not care for security.  "This is an insult to the Shaheed leader and all those who lost their lives with her," she said.

"The video footage clearly shows the absence of adequate security around the PPP leader just when she was leaving the Liaquat Bagh premises and after. None of us were scanned when we went in, and nobody was scanned as we left as well," Rahman said.

She said rather than admitting its own failure, the regime was trying to tell people that "you will be responsible for the consequences if you try to exercise your fundamental rights."

Rahman said the security lapses were so huge that Benazir Bhutto was left totally exposed to the assassins.

"The Mohtarma was clearly shot at, and the blast happened minutes later. The October 18 blasts followed a similar pattern. There was firing first, followed by the blasts," she said.

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