June 07, 2008	Saturday	Jamadi-us-Sani 02, 1429

ISLAMABAD, June 6: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has condemned the claim made in a book that former prime minister Benazir Bhutto confided to the author that she participated in nuclear black market and termed it a “despicable attempt to sell the book”.

A London-based Indian journalist, Shyam Bhatya, recently claimed in his book Goodbye Shahzadi that Ms Bhutto had acknowledged her role in nuclear black market.

In a statement here on Friday, PPP spokesperson and former senator Farhatullah Babar said the claim that Ms Bhutto made such an acknowledgement to an obscure journalist was a “tasteless and cheap exploitation of her tragic assassination”.

The assassinated leader has been the architect of “Benazir Nuclear Doctrine” that strictly forbade exports of nuclear technology to any country.

The claims that author Shyam Bhatya kept in regular touch with her are also preposterous and are made only to lend credibility to his false assertions and get some attention that has eluded him, the PPP spokesman said.

Mr Babar said a few weeks before her assassination in October, last year, Shyam Bhatya wanted a 10-minute face to face interview with her for what he claimed a cover story for a magazine.

“Can you get me 10 minutes with her,” he had then asked in his e-mail of October 7, 2007, also pleading that “most important of all if we cannot talk is to go over and take a picture of her”.

Ms Bhutto refused to grant a face-to-face interview, declined to be photographed and even did not accede to the request for a telephonic interview because Mr Bhatya’s standing and credentials did not warrant it, he said.

Instead Mr Bhatya was asked to send his written questions to the Media Office for answers that he did and got replies to the questions from the Media Office and not direct from her, the spokesperson said. There was not one question relating to the nuclear issue in the list of questions that were replied to on her behalf by the Media Office, he said.