On Thursday the United Nations agreed to help in setting up an independent commission to investigate those whom the Pakistani foreign minister called “the conspirers, the financiers, the perpetrators, that led to motivating this assassination, and bring them to justice.”
The assassination last December of the popular former prime minister and leader of the Pakistan People’s Party stunned Pakistan and the world, and quickly set off a wide range of conspiracy theories, including the idea that Pakistan’s powerful internal security agencies were involved and that Musharraf was culpable, or at least failed to prevent her slaying.
“Why a person, who had come with a message of reconciliation, why was she eliminated? Who were the forces behind it? What objectives did they have? Why were they considering Benazir Bhutto a threat to them?” asked Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi declined to endorse accusations by President Pervez Musharraf’s government and the CIA that Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistani militant commander often blamed for suicide attacks, had orchestrated Bhutto’s December 27 killing at a campaign rally before parliamentary elections.
Pakistan’s Interior Ministry has released a wiretap in which Mehsud associates purportedly congratulated each other for her death. Bhutto had called for Pakistan to redouble its efforts against Islamic extremism.
“The point is we do not want to make premature allegations, because we want an impartial, independent inquiry,” Qureshi told the AP in an interview Saturday at his hotel across from the United Nations building.
“We cannot jump to conclusions before the investigation is started,” he added.
“What I’m saying is we cannot rule it out, you cannot rule it out that he was responsible, but you cannot say with certainty that he is responsible. Only the inquiry will determine who was or was not responsible,” Qureshi said.
Mehsud is one of a number of warlords in Pakistan’s lawless northwest provinces with whom the government is trying to negotiate a controversial peace deal. He denies playing a role in Bhutto’s death.
The membership, funding and powers of the UN commission to investigate the Bhutto assassination are still to be worked out between the United Nations and Pakistan’s UN ambassador.
“What we want is credible people, people of eminence, people who have stature and respectability,” Qureshi said.
Bhutto was the figurehead of Pakistan’s most prominent political family and party – a mantle she adopted following the execution of her father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1979 during a former military regime. Her demise was a shock to Pakistanis, capping one of the most turbulent years in the country’s six-decade history that has shaken Musharraf’s standing both at home and abroad.
Qureshi, himself a member of Bhutto’s PPP party and part of the new government elected just over 100 days ago, largely on a wave of sympathy votes, said: “The initial inquiry was full of contradictions, and people had no faith in it. You have to put people’s minds at rest, and they were not satisfied.”
He said a Scotland Yard inquiry invited in by Pakistan’s government had a mandate “just to inquire about the cause of death, not who was responsible for the assassination.”
Commissions and investigations that looked into the assassinations of President John F Kennedy, his brother Robert F Kennedy during a presidential campaign, and civil rights leader the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr all led to lingering doubts among many Americans about the assassinations rather than put concerns to rest.
When Qureshi was asked how the proposed UN commission could avoid such an outcome, he simply said, “We have to make the effort. We cannot just let it go because Benazir Bhutto was a very, very important international leader.
“She was representing the free world’s values of democracy, and freedom of speech an association, and women’s empowerment. She was leading a major Muslim country and was bringing the path of social change to that region. So her loss is no ordinary loss,” he said.
Determining who was behind Bhutto’s killing could bring clarity and determination to Pakistan’s fragile coalition government, which sought the inquiry.
It also could help stabilize a nation that is a key US ally in its fight against terrorism, but is seen as increasingly in disarray with an influx of insurgents joining with al-Qaida and other militant groups in Pakistan’s remote tribal and mountainous areas.
Pakistan now is run by Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of her Pakistan People’s Party, who also has been consumed by efforts to remove President Pervez Musharraf. But the military is the main force propping up the nation. Half the ministers left the Cabinet in May, bickering over the fate of judges dismissed by Musharraf last year.