Bhutto rejected US advice on security: NYT

United States officials had asked Benazir Bhutto to hire Pakistani private security companies instead of foreign firms for protection in the wake of the threat to her life, but the former Prime Minister and her husband rejected the advice.

Diplomats at the US embassy in Islamabad, including Ambassador Anne W Patterson, were in daily contact with officials from Bhutto's party, The New York Times said quoting a senior State Department official.

The Americans were passing along information and specific advice on private security contractors to hire, but Bhutto and her aides apparently spurned the counsel, the official said.

"Diplomats and security experts at the American Embassy, for example, discouraged Bhutto from hiring American or British private security firms fearing that a Western guard detail would draw too much attention to her and become a target," the paper said.

"Security officers at the embassy, instead, recommended the names of half-a-dozen Pakistani security companies that the United States and other western countries had used to protect their personnel," the paper said quoting the official.

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