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Bhutto's Husband Calls For U.N. Probe In Death

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By RAVI NESSMAN, The Associated Press

Published: January 6, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Benazir Bhutto's widowed husband accused members of Pakistan's ruling regime of involvement in his wife's killing and called Saturday for a U.N. investigation as British officers aiding Pakistan's own probe pored over the crime scene.

"An investigation conducted by the government of Pakistan will have no credibility in my country or anywhere else," Asif Ali Zardari, the effective leader of Bhutto's opposition party, said in a commentary published in The Washington Post. "One does not put the fox in charge of the hen house."

Calls for an independent, international investigation have intensified since the former prime minister was killed Dec. 27 in a shooting and bombing after a campaign rally. Opposition activists denounced the government's initial assessment that an Islamic militant was behind the attack and that Bhutto died, not from gunshot wounds, but the force of the blast.

President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged investigators may have drawn conclusions too quickly and mishandled evidence, including hosing down the site hours after the attack. But he insisted the government was competent to run the investigation with the help of forensic experts from Britain's Scotland Yard. The United States said it did not think a United Nations investigation was needed.

In an interview to be aired on CBS' "60 Minutes" program today, Musharraf acknowledged Bhutto may have been shot, CBS reported on its Web site. "Yes, absolutely, yes. Possibility," Musharraf was quoted as saying.
British investigators arrived at the attack site in Rawalpindi under heavy guard in sport utility vehicles. They spoke to security officials and repeatedly walked from the park where Bhutto held the campaign rally to the spot where her vehicle was attacked.

Local police parked a truck where Bhutto's had been, and the British investigators took photographs of it and filmed it from different angles, including from a nearby rooftop.
Zardari said no government investigation would satisfy him. He reiterated his demand for a U.N. probe modeled on the investigation into the death of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He also urged "friends of democracy in the West, in particular the United States and Britain, to endorse the call for such an independent investigation."

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