Pakistan honours Bhutto one year after her death

Pakistan will issue a new 10-rupee coin in honour of slain former premier Benazir Bhutto to coincide with the first anniversary of her death in a suicide attack, the central bank said on Friday.

The State Bank of Pakistan will issue about 300 000 of the commemorative coins bearing Bhutto’s portrait and inscribed with the phrase “Daughter of the East—Honourable Benazir Bhutto” in Urdu, it said in a statement.

Bhutto was assassinated in a suicide attack in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on December 27 after addressing an election rally, just two months after surviving a strike on her homecoming parade in Karachi.

The government has renamed Islamabad’s international airport after the two-time former premier, as well as a main road and hospital in Rawalpindi.

Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, took office as Pakistan’s president in September, succeeding Pervez Musharraf, who stepped down after being threatened with impeachment by Pakistan’s Parliament for violating the Constitution.

Zardari took over as co-chairperson of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which swept the February general elections that had been postponed in the wake of her slaying.

Pakistan has asked the United Nations to set up an independent panel to probe her killing.—AFP