January 19, 2008	Saturday	Muharram 09, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Jan 18: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has welcomed the call by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi for an international probe into the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and for free and fair elections in Pakistan.

Speaking on the floor of the house on Thursday, Nancy Pelosi citing “the tremendous contribution of Benazir Bhutto to the cause of democracy’, demanded “strong international investigation of this despicable crime” and asked the Bush administration to “continue to press the Pakistani government to ensure that the coming election is free and fair”.

Earlier, presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton had also called a “full, independent and international investigation”.

In a statement issued here on Friday, PPP spokesman Farhatullah Khan Babar said the party would tenaciously pursue the demand for a United Nations (UN) probe and had already sent letters to the UN secretary general and five permanent members of the Security Council.

He said the UN had also offered to hold investigations, if request was made by the government of Pakistan. It had also called upon the world community to help in exposing “the organisers, perpetrators and financiers” of the assassination plot, but the regime had declined to accept the demand, he said.

“The more the regime runs away from UN probe the more it strengthens the suspicion that it was hiding something”, he added.

Even if the regime refuses to accept the demand, he said, the party would take up the request with the UN when it formed the government after the elections. He said the regime was scheming to run away from the polls, if it could not rig them.

“The PPP welcomes strident calls for free and fair elections and for linking US assistance to the credibility of the plans for transition to democracy,” he said.

Since 2001, $10 billion of assistance received by the regime has remained wrapped in secrecy as dictatorship was entrenched and democratic institutions systematically weakened, he said.

Speaker Pelosi had also said, “the best way the United States can honour the legacy of Benazir Bhutto is to renew our engagement directly with the people of Pakistan.”

Mr Babar said the PPP had all along maintained that there were troubling questions about the absence of monitoring of assistance and whether it had been used for fighting terror or for suppressing democracy and democratic institutions in the country.

PESHAWAR BLAST CONDEMNED: PPP information secretary Sherry Rehman in a statement on Friday condemned the bomb blast in Peshawar that claimed 12 lives and injured 25 others.

Ms Rehman said it was indeed a shame that the state had completely failed in its primary responsibility of providing security to the people.

“The recent attacks have shown that everybody is at threat. Be it a high profile leader like Benazir Bhutto, or the police force, or the army, or the labour, or the worshippers. The terrorists are waging an indiscriminate war against the citizens of Pakistan, in the face of a state that has for long demonstrated ambiguity in its policy on extremists and terrorists,” she said.

According to Ms Rehman, today’s indiscriminate terrorism had unfortunately made Pakistan a case study for the world.

“For years, the regime advocated the policy of nurturing terrorists in the country’s backyard to safeguard Pakistan’s so- called strategic interests. Today, the same elements have turned their guns against us,” she regretted.