Two months before she was assassinated Benazir Bhutto sent an e-mail to a US-based friend and adviser, saying that if she were killed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would be to blame.

CNN reported the existence of the e-mail after Bhutto was killed while leaving an election rally in Rawalpindi on Thursday. Noting the Musharraf government’s denial of her request for additional security following a failed assassination attempt against her in Karachi in October, Bhutto wrote to Mark Siegel: “Nothing will, God willing, happen.”

“Just wanted u to know if it does in addition to the names in my letter to Musharaf of Oct 16nth, I wld hold Musharaf responsible. I have been made to feel insecure by his minions and there is no way what is happening in terms of stopping me from taking private cars or using tinted windows or giving jammers or four police mobiles to cover all sides cld happen without him,” she wrote in the e-mail.

Siegel sent that October 26 e-mail to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, with instructions he not report on it unless Bhutto was killed.

Bush administration officials also had expressed concern about Bhutto’s security prior to the assassination. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the administration “certainly wanted to make sure that we conveyed to the Pakistani government officials our strong concerns about her safety and our desire to see them do everything that they could to ensure that she was protected.”

“Obviously, unfortunately, the fact remains that despite efforts that were made, she was killed and was, you know, something that I think she was aware of the risks of and spoke rather eloquently about the fact that she was confronting these kinds of risks. But what’s most important now I think is that there is an investigation of this, that that investigation be credible and transparent and that anyone who is responsible for this gets brought to justice,” he added.

The Bush administration, meanwhile, urged Musharraf to ensure that Pakistan continues on the path to democracy.

However, Daniel Markey at the Council on Foreign Relations said Bhutto’s assassination would likely result in a postponement of elections set for January 8. He predicted the Bush administration would not set a timeline for elections realizing the situation on the ground in Pakistan has “gotten a lot messier.”

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the decision to postpone the elections was up to the Pakistanis. “Free and fair elections are an integral part of a democratic society, and we’re in the opening hours of this tragedy, this assassination. But that is up to the people of Pakistan,” he said.

At the State Department, Casey said it was important that Musharraf do everything to create the conditions on the ground to have “as free and fair and transparent an election as possible.”

“No political system can last long without having legitimacy in the eyes of its people and certainly, one of the key elements for legitimacy for Pakistan’s government, as for any other government, is to be able to hold credible elections that allow the people of that country to have a real say and a real voice in who their leaders are,” he said.

President Bush spoke to President Pervez Musharraf on Thursday and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice expressed her condolences to Mrs. Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari in a phone conversation.

Rice called Bhutto’s death “a great loss for Pakistan.” She also spoke to Amin Fahim, who took over as head of the Pakistan Peoples Party.

Stephen Philip Cohen at the Brookings Institution noted that while Bhutto “was accused of many things, she was no coward.”

“The former prime minister understood that the politicians’ job description includes contact with the people, and she was willing to risk her life to again be a politician in Pakistan,” Cohen said.

White House spokesman Stanzel said it was “important to the long-term prospects of democracy in Pakistan that there be an open review” of the assassination.

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times on November 7, Bhutto wrote: “While the world must do its part to confront tyranny, the primary responsibility rests in the hands of the people of Pakistan... The overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are moderate; it is my hope that they will unite in a coalition of moderation to marginalize both the dictators and the extremists, to restore civilian rule to the presidency and to shut down political madrassas, the Islamic schools that stock weapons and preach violence.”

Ambassador Karl Inderfurth said he subscribes to this vision of Pakistan’s political future. “It is my hope that in the aftermath of the tragedy of her assassination, a ‘coalition of moderation’ will form in Pakistan to confront and ultimately prevail over the forces of extremism. This would be a lasting tribute - and legacy - for Benazir Bhutto,” Inderfurth, an assistant secretary of state for South Asia in the Clinton administration, told The Tribune.

Islamabad, December 28
Doctors at a Rawalpindi hospital struggled for over half-an-hour to revive former Pakistan Premier Benazir Bhutto after she was shot by a suicide attacker, before declaring her dead.

A report sent by the Rawalpindi General Hospital to the Punjab provincial government said all efforts by its doctors to revive Bhutto failed and she was declared dead 41 minutes after she was brought to the emergency department at 5.35 pm local time.

The hospital’s report said Bhutto had open wounds on her left temporal bone from which “brain matter was exuding”. It said she was not breathing when she was brought to hospital and her pulse and blood pressure “were not recordable”. — PTI

Geneva, December 28
A Swiss investigation against the late Benazir Bhutto for alleged money-laundering was declared closed, her lawyer said today.

A parallel investigation against her husband continues, however, said Alec Reymond, Bhutto’s lawyer in Geneva.

Since 2004, the Swiss authorities had been conducting the investigation into allegations that Bhutto had used Swiss banks to launder millions of dollars in kickbacks.

Bhutto denied the accusations and insisted the corruption cases against her, including the one in Switzerland, were politically motivated.

The chief prosecutor of the canton (state) of Geneva said in October he had received the conclusions of the investigation and would decide shortly whether to file charges, suspend the proceedings or drop the case.

Her lawyer said on Friday that “the file is closed because the death of the suspect requires the termination of public proceedings”.

Bhutto, who was Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s most powerful political opponent, was killed yesterday in a shooting and bomb attack, which also killed 20 other people.

Reymond said proceedings would continue against Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and another individual, who are also suspected of corruption. He declined to identify the third suspect.

A Geneva magistrate convicted Bhutto and her husband in absentia of money-laundering in July, 2003 under a Swiss law that empowers high-level investigators to impose penalties without a court hearing. — AP

Mumbai, December 28
Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan who heads the Tehreek-E-Insaf Party in Pakistan today said that the country's leader President Pervez Musharraf was responsible for the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Speaking to the media here today,Khan said that President Musharraf should leave immediately.He felt that the President had not provided adequate security to Benazir Bhutto despite agreeing to have her contest the elections in Pakistan."Benazir had arrived in Pakistan to fight terrorism as a part of a power- sharing deal. She was under severe threat. The people, who were targeting Musharraf would obviously target Bhutto as well," Khan said.

He further noted that Musharraf had already been attacked twice and he travelled with security that consisted of more than 70 vehicles, helicopters and other paraphernalia.

"Even after the first attempt on Benazir Bhutto failed, why was she not provided adequate security despite the fact that she had expressed concern over her safety," Khan asked.The former cricketer who is a regular visitor to Mumbai scoffed at Musharaff for setting up a

judicial probe into the killing of Benazir Bhutto."They have initiated a judicial inquiry when 60 per cent of Pakistan's judges have been sacked," Khan said. "The present judges have no constitutional cover. They are Musharaff's judges," he added.

Khan noted that a national government comprising representatives of all parties be formed following the resignation of President Musharaff. "Musharaff has failed. He cannot offer any solutions, he himself is the problem," Khan said. He further said that the sacked judges, including Chief Justice Ifthikar Choudhary, be reinstated. "Only the reinstated judges should inquire into Bhutto's assassination as no one has faith in the current judiciary," Khan said.

Khan further said the proposed elections in January should be called off. "The present election is a sham.Who will go and address rallies or for that matter who will attend rallies," Khan said.

Incidentally, Khan was also critical of Benazir Bhutto's decision to contest the elections. "She should have boycotted the elections like my party and Nawaz Sharif's parties did," Khan said.

Imran Khan is to return home on Saturday.

Islamabad, December 28
Pakistan’s largest political party PPP finds itself leaderless and rudderless in the aftermath of its charismatic chief Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.

Founded by her late father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1967, the Pakistan People’s Party has been led by the father-daughter duo with Benazir’s mother Nusrat Bhutto also pitching in for some time as party president.

With Bhutto’s three children, all teenagers, unlikely to be drafted to succeed her, the slain leader’s husband Asif Ali Zardari figures among the probable successors whose names are doing the rounds. However, he has been embroiled in corruption cases and has spent eight years in the prison.

Apart from Zardari, names of Bhutto’s close aide Makhdoom Amin Fahim and senior lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan are also being talked about.

The party, which is stunned by the sudden development, is yet to formally discuss the leadership issue.

The PPP has traditionally banked on the Bhutto family for its leadership. Benazir had herself stepped in to fill the void created by the execution of her father, former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged after a controversial trial conducted by the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq in 1979. — PTI

Islamabad, December 28
Hours before she was assassinated, former Pakistan Premier Benazir Bhutto spoke to her three children over phone.

Though she was busy with her election campaign in Punjab province throughout yesterday morning, she took out time to speak to her children Bakhtawar (19), Bilawal (17) and Asifa (14).

“There were meetings going on but she spoke to her children as she normally did whenever she was away from home,” a close aide of Bhutto told ‘The Post’.

Bhutto spoke at length to her youngest daughter Asifa, the aide said.

The 54-year-old two-time Premier died after being shot by the suicide attacker, who subsequently blew himself up near the venue of her election rally in Rawalpindi.

Her husband Asif Ali Zardari and children returned to Pakistan from Dubai late last night and accompanied her body in a special military aircraft from Rawalpindi to her ancestral village in Sindh province.

Bhutto had taken a three-day break from her hectic election campaign in early December to meet her family in Dubai. Though she was to fly to Dubai on December 6, the trip was delayed by a day because of a mix-up over her passport, and that was her last meeting with her children.

Fearing there would be more attempts on her life, Zardari had then asked Bhutto not to go back to Pakistan, especially in view of the suicide attacks on her homecoming rally in Karachi on October 18 that killed nearly 140 people.

“She knew that something like this could happen and she told her husband that she is not afraid,” Bhutto’s aide recalled.

When he received the news, an inconsolable Zardari initially refused to believe that Bhutto had died. “I don’t believe all this. I will believe it only when I see her with my own eyes,” he sobbed.

Bhutto married Zardari in 1987 and was very proud of her family. “I am lucky to have a good husband and good children,” she told a TV channel recently.

Like all mothers, Bhutto doted on her children but also fiercely guarded their privacy. She even put off her return to Pakistan for some years, saying her children needed their mother.

“I love to cook for my children. Although my husband does not like my cooking,” she said in one of her last interviews.

Apart from her husband and children, Bhutto took care of her mother Nusrat, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s and her apolitical younger sister Sanam.

Bhutto lost her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and two brothers Murtaza and Shahnawaz in equally tragic circumstances.

Two weeks after the October 18 blasts, Bhutto left for Dubai to see her children and ailing mother, but returned home almost immediately after President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan on November 3.

“My children had heard about the (Karachi) bomb blast through their friends and they were worried. I could not immediately visit them then, so I promised to pay them a visit later,” she had said about that visit to Dubai. — PTI