LAHORE, Oct 20: Malik Ghulam Mustafa Khar on Saturday claimed the attack on Ms Benazir Bhutto’s procession in Karachi was a conspiracy to intimidate the PPP chairperson and her life was still under threat.

At a news conference here at the Lahore Press Club, the former Punjab governor said it would be foolish to term the attempt on Ms Bhutto’s life a suicide attack. To him, it was a pre-planned attack.

He accused the PPP leaders riding Ms Bhutto’s truck in Karachi of bringing workers to the procession without ensuring their security. He said it was like inviting defenceless people to “Sundarbun jungle where man eating tigers freely roam”. He alleged that after the blasts the PPP leaders abandoned the workers’ bodies to decompose on roads or in hospitals.

Comparing the carnage with the infamous Jallianwala Bagh incident, Khar said the only difference between the two tragic happenings was that here (in Karachi) the Muslims were killed by Muslims as a punishment for demanding the removal of a dictator.

He said the people who saw power slipping from their hands were behind the Karachi carnage. However, he refrained from identifying perpetrators of the attack and asked as to why Ms Bhutto was not naming the killers. He said it is for her to nominate the culprits, adding: “In my view they are all those who fear losing power.”

Mr Khar, who was recently expelled from the PPP by Ms Bhutto, said he had forewarned her of bloodshed and anarchy in the country. There were ways to avert the tragedy but it looked as if the rulers were deliberately moving towards anarchy in the country, he said.

He said Ms Bhutto was not willing to accept his advice which, he said was based on what he had learnt from Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and after his long political experience. “I had earlier made it clear that the PPP-government deal was an unnatural alliance but those surrounding her (Ms Bhutto) did not advise her right. The daughter of my friend is being surrounded by enemies from within,” he said.

He said the president should have removed the Punjab and Sindh governments before Ms Bhutto’s arrival to ensure her safety. “The president put Ms Bhutto’s security in the hands of those who did not want to see her (alive),” he alleged.

He said before landing in Karachi Ms Bhutto had perhaps forgotten that her government had conducted a major operation against the Muttahida Qaumi Movement. The PPP was a threat in Sindh only for the MQM in which President Musharraf had inculcated the habit of showing full power in any event, he said.

Mr Khar said he was speaking the truth at the risk of his life because Pakistan was in danger, and warned a more serious attempt on Ms Bhutto’s life would be made in Punjab. “Those behind such moves wanted to destabilise the country, putting it on the path to dismemberment,” he remarked.

The deal between the PPP and the government was actually brokered by Rehman Malik and Tariq Aziz, he said. “The former wanted to come here to mourn the death of his father and the latter intended to teach a lesson to the Chaudhrys”. To some extent, Gen Musharraf too wanted to befriend Ms Bhutto under international pressure and to come out of the situation at home in which he was deeply entangled, he said.

According to him, Ms Bhutto was lucky that people still loved her father, but feared that they would abandon her if the PPP failed to protect them. “Her reception was impressive but this was a trailer. Watch the whole movie and you will find the situation quite different,” he said.

Mr Khar said the reception to Ms Bhutto would have been four times bigger had she returned home without a deal and landed in Lahore.