June 22, 2008	Sunday	Jamadi-us-Sani 17, 1429

LARKANA, June 21: The 55th birth anniversary of Benazir Bhutto was commemorated in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh Bhutto on Saturday as a large number of PPP leaders and workers visited the village to pay homage to the slain People’s Party chief.

The air resounded with slogans of ‘Zinda hay Bhutto Zinda hay’ after the Sindh chief minister and several ministers laid floral wreaths at the last resting places of Z.A. Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto.

The People’s Doctors Forum and the district health office had jointly set up blood donation camps at the mazar and Naudero, where more than 100 workers, along with PPP co-chairman Asif Zardari and provincial minister Tauqeer Fatima Bhutto, donated blood.

These packs of blood would be donated to hospitals, said a local health official.

Asif Zardari, who had arrived in Naudero late on Friday night and went to Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, offered Fateha and laid floral wreaths on the mazars of late Z.A.Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto.

Party workers and unemployed youth besieged Qaim Ali Shah and his entourage with job applications. The acting Sindh Governor, Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, ambassador-designate to UAE Khursheed Junejo, former MNA Anwar Bhutto and many others attended the Quran Khwani held inside the mausoleum of Z.A.Bhutto.

They also laid floral wreaths and offered Fateha at Ms Bhutto’s grave.

Different youth bodies, among them a group of candidates who had passed aptitude tests for high school teachers, demonstrated outside the mausoleum, calling upon the government to give them jobs.

Gul Muhamemed Jakhrani, an adviser to the Sindh chief minister, performed the launching ceremony of a Sindhi magazine, ‘Shaheed Rani’, on the occasion.

Fiery Asif

Asif Zardari said at a press conference at the Bhutto House on Saturday that “conspirators were busy destabilising” the present government.

Mr Zardari said the conspirators were a part of the clique that had dethroned the Z.A.Bhutto government and broke up Pakistan.

The same ‘thought process’ still flourished, he added, and held it responsible for Ms Bhutto’s assassination.

He said it was the ‘philosophy’ of Ms Benazir Bhutto that had saved Pakistan and recalled that after the assassination “we said ‘Pakistan Khapey’ (we want Pakistan) amid a feeble secessionist noise” following the December assassination.

In reply to a question regarding the negotiations between him and Nawaz Sharif over the reinstatement of judges, he said it was a ‘relationship, and not negotiations. “The relationship will have continuity.”

Recalling his recent stay in Lahore, Mr Zardari said he had stayed for two days, out of four, as a guest of Nawaz Sharif, expressing a hope that in future, instead of putting up at the Governor’s House, he would “enjoy hospitality” at Nawaz Sharif’s village.

He brushed aside reports of differences with Mr Nawaz as “discord within a family”.

“The Pakistan People’ Party and the PML-N are at one over the restoration of judges and we have to only work out how to go about it.”

The PPP leader said “sooner than longer a PPP worker would enter the President’s House”.

Pressed to disclose the name of the individual most likely to grace the presidency, he said it would be premature.

However, Mr Zardari added, PPP and PML-N would consult on the issue and if “we (Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif) fail, both of us would be in Landhi jail”.

In reply to a question, he said it was unprecedented that the National Assembly and all four provincial assemblies, without a single negative vote, had passed resolutions for initiating probe into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto by the UN.

“I am lobbying for it personally and contacts with US, Turkey and some other countries have borne positive results,” he added.

He disclosed that a monument to Benazir Bhutto would be built at Liaquat Bagh while the hospital where she died would be generously funded.

He said he had asked party workers to visit Imran Khan’s cancer hospital and donate blood to the institution.

Recalling the genius of Ms Benazir Bhutto, he said ‘her philosophy takes off where intellect.

Asif Zardari said his party had resolved to make Larkana a ‘model district’.