By Muhammad Najeeb, IANS
Islamabad : Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has once again refused to involve the UN in the probe into the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, saying the international body cannot be brought in as a second country was not involved in the murder.
In interviews to various media organisations, the president said the UN could only be involved if another country is involved. “There cannot be a UN investigation. There are not two or three countries involved. Why should there be a UN investigation? This is ridiculous,” he told Newsweek in an interview.
“This is Pakistan and not Lebanon,” he said in another interview with a French newspaper reacting to demands by Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) that investigations be conducted by the UN, like the probe into Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri’s murder in 2005.
Pakistani and Scotland Yard investigators are probing Bhutto’s murder.
Musharraf said he expects Scotland Yard and local investigators to finalise the probe report before the planned Feb 18 general elections. The polls, earlier scheduled for Jan 8, were delayed because of nationwide violence sparked by Bhutto’s murder on Dec 27.
An interior ministry official has also clarified that the Scotland Yard team is here only to determine the cause of Bhutto’s death.
“Under the agreement they are only assisting their Pakistani counterparts in knowing the cause of the death, and will only submit the report to the Pakistani authorities and not make it public themselves,” the official told IANS.
Media reports here say that the Scotland Yard team has called for Bhutto’s post mortem, which was not done on request by her husband Asif Ali Zardari. They were quoted telling their Pakistani colleagues that they cannot move forward without the post mortem report.
“We need expert opinion on how she was killed and what hit her head,” The Nation daily quoted unnamed sources working with the British team as saying. The paper said the team has also demanded this in their meeting with Musharraf.
During his Newsweek interview, Musharraf called for Bhutto’s body to be exhumed as he rejected charges that the government was complicit in her assassination.
“Yes, exhume it. A hundred percent. I would like it to be exhumed,” he said.
But he ruled out ordering a post-mortem without the agreement of Bhutto’s family. Asked why he should not use his executive power to order one, he said: “Everything is not black and white here. It would have very big political ramifications. If I just ordered the body exhumed, that would be careless, unless (Bhutto’s) people agreed. But they will not.”
He said Bhutto’s supporters had not agreed to a post-mortem “because they know it’s a fact there is nothing wrong. Everybody is trying to gain political advantage; the entire opposition is trying to take political advantage”.
Pakistan has been in turmoil since Bhutto’s assassination on Dec 27 and her PPP has challenged the government’s reports on her death. The government had earlier said the Al Qaeda was behind the firing and suicide blast that day. It later said that she was killed by hitting her head on the sunroof lever of her bomb proof Land Cruiser.
However, it retracted the statement following vehement protests from the party and video clips showing a man firing a gun at her during the rally at Rawalpindi.
The government also released a tape in which local tribal leader Baitullah Mehsood, associated with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, received “greetings” from his colleague, apparently after the killing.