Benazir Bhutto has vowed to press ahead with her campaign to become Pakistan’s next prime minister despite the threat of assassination, and called on the government to seek outside help in investigating last Thursday’s suicide attack.
”We will have to modify our campaign because of the suicide bombings. But we will continue to meet the public. We will not be deterred,” she said, after visiting bomb victims at a Karachi hospital.
Investigators arrested three men with alleged links to the bombing, in which 139 people died and 300 were wounded, in southern Punjab on Saturday night. They also released a photo of the suspected suicide bomber’s head and offered a reward for anyone who can identify him.
Bhutto said international counter-terrorism experts could assist, and repeated allegations that fundamentalists within the military and intelligence agencies were aiding the Taliban militants.
”The closet supporters of militants and al-Qaeda are determined to stop the restoration of democracy because they see it as a threat to the structure of militancy they have put into place,” she said.
She also questioned why street lights in the vicinity of the midnight attack had been switched off.
The allegations drew an impatient response from the government that hinted at possible strains in her relationship with President Pervez Musharraf. ”We should stop playing games,” said the Deputy Information Minister, Tariq Azim. ”Lights keep going on and off in Pakistan; there’s nothing significant in it.”
Azim called on Bhutto to keep her silence until the police investigation is completed. ”Her repetition of these allegations is diverting attention from the real culprits. It would have been better if she kept this between herself and the president.”
Bhutto and Musharraf are eyeing a possible power-sharing arrangement after a general election due by mid-January. Bhutto says she wrote to Musharraf with detailed intelligence of suspected suicide bombers two days before her return last Tuesday.
But the carnage has raised questions about how the 54-year-old former prime minister will be able to campaign in the coming months. Since Thursday, the security around Bhutto has intensified. Guards armed with assault rifles stood outside her Karachi home on Sunday and reporters entering the house were subject to five body searches.
Plans to visit Larkana, the Bhutto political heartland, have been frozen until security arrangements are made. Officials said it may take place later this week. Such meetings are crucial to Bhutto — her party’s main support comes from rural areas where mass rallies remain a key tool of political mobilisation.
A call by Musharraf’s PML-Q party for a ban on political rallies was denounced in several newspapers. The restrictions would ”greatly benefit an increasingly desperate” party, said Dawn.
Bhutto’s security adviser, Rehman Malik, said she had decided to take on the militants, ”come what may”.
”Somebody has to teach them a lesson. Either there are the militants, or there is Pakistan. It’s a very clear line,” he said. — Guardian Unlimited Â