Zardari slams Musharraf for Benazir death ‘insult’

Pakistan Peoples Party co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari has slammed President Pervez Musharraf for saying Benazir Bhutto (chairperson of PPP) was to blame for her own martyrdom by poking her head out of her car sunroof.

Asif Ali Zardari also told AFP that Musharraf’s admission that a bullet may have martyred her — not a blow to the head from the sunroof lever as officials previously said — showed the authorities had “something to hide”.

“I think he is trying to shift responsibility, to say the least,” Zardari, 51, husband of Benazir Bhutto and currently serving as the co-chairman of PPP said in an interview late on Monday at the Benazir family’s ancestral home in Naudero.

“She’s on record of having written to him asking permission for international assistance and security which they denied her,” said Zardari, who has called for a UN probe into his wife’s death.

Zardari’s comments intensified the rancour between President Musharraf and PPP, ahead of February 18 elections.

President Musharraf told US television network CBS that Benazir was at fault for putting her upper body outside the sunroof to greet supporters at an election rally on December 27, moments before she was martyred in a gun and suicide attack.

“I think it was she to blame alone. Nobody else. Responsibility is hers,” he said.

Asked if he felt insulted by President Musharraf’s comments, Zardari added: “It’s a total insult to the cause of democracy that he could not save the one person that could keep Pakistan together.”

Speaking in a plush sitting room filled with photographs of Benazir, after meeting more mourners at the house, Zardari was also scathing about Musharraf’s admission to CBS that a bullet may have caused the fatal injury.

“They have changed stories four times… Why do you think you change stories? Because you have something to hide,” said Zardari.

He dismissed Musharraf’s claims that Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network was behind the attack.

“Al Qaeda are not standing against us at the election and moreover they have also denied it. Why should we believe (the government) and not them?”

But he said that if elected, the PPP would continue the former premier’s pro-Western outlook and strong stance against extremism — adding that he would welcome more US assistance.

The Pakistan army on Sunday reacted angrily to a New York Times report that the White House was considering approving military operations inside Pakistan to target Taliban and al Qaeda militants.

“The Americans are already in the Pakistani territory, we are only trying to mince words by saying they are not,” Zardari said.

Benazir “in her wisdom talked that Pakistan needs more help, that nothing is being done… and that Talibanisation is going from bad to worse,” he said.

Zardari said the PPP was well prepared for the elections, which have been postponed from January 8 to February 18 because of violence sparked by Benazir’s martyred, but claimed they had already been “heavily rigged.”

He also rejected suggestions that corruption allegations against him from Benazir’s two terms in power could be an electoral liability.

He is widely known in Pakistan as “Mr Ten Percent” due to the claims about kickbacks. He served eight years in jail from 1996 to 2004 on charges that were eventually dropped and which he says were politically motivated.

“The allegations against me have been regurgitated now because they were used as a tool from the start,” he said.

Looking tired after travelling to see his son off to a new term at Britain’s Oxford University, Zardari admitted he had fears for Bilawal’s safety but said he had to honour his wife’s last wishes.

Zardari said he was named as the new chairman in her will but the party “applauded me that I was willing to take the risk” to make Bilawal co-leader in order to keep a Bhutto at its head.

“Remember two of our chairmen have been martyred,” he said, referring to Bhutto and her father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979.

“I could have easily taken my children and said ‘thank you, goodbye, I want nothing to do with this, they have hurt our family enough’ but because it was her will to tie me to this chair I did not,” he said.

He said Bilawal was coping well despite his mother’s death.

“Bilawal is definitely made out of better DNA than I am,” he said.

“But you can imagine it’s a huge, huge, huge tragedy. It’s not that she was just a mother, mother is one sentiment, but she was so much larger than life.”