ISLAMABAD, Jan 8: The Pakistan People’s Party has decided to send delegations to various countries to lobby for a United Nations investigation into the assassination of party chairperson Benazir Bhutto.
Sources told Dawn that PPP senior vice-chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim and chairman of the party’s Foreign Liaison Committee Senator Enver Baig would meet visiting US Senator Joseph Lieberman and US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson separately to apprise them of the party’s concerns over the ongoing developments regarding the probe.
Talking to Dawn on Tuesday, PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar said that after the rejection of party’s demand for a UN probe, the party had decided to write to foreign governments and send delegations abroad to seek international assistance in pressurising the government to seek the UN probe.
He said the party would not give up on it and continue to agitate at all available forums. “If the present regime doesn’t approach the UN, the future PPP government will formally urge the world body to probe the assassination of Ms Bhutto as was done in the case of murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.”
Mr Babar said the government’s rejection of PPP’s demand for UN investigations “smacked of a cover-up”.
He said his party had no faith in the investigations ordered by the regime, adding that the Scotland Yard team had only been asked to probe the causes of death and not the perpetrators, financiers, or organisers of the conspiracy.
The PPP leader said the role of Scotland Yard investigators had already been circumscribed as they had been told to work under Pakistani investigators and not allowed to question the suspects named in Ms Bhutto’s letter of Oct 16 sent to President Musharraf.
“The issue of who ordered the erasing of evidence has also raised questions that need to be answered,” he said, adding that under the law, destruction of such evidence in a murder case was a punishable offence.
“The evidence was erased within hours of the assassination on Dec 27 as was done in the case when the PPP procession was bombed in Karachi on Oct 18,” he said.
Mr Babar alleged that the police team had visited the crime scene five days after the incident on Dec 31, adding that the place had been thoroughly scrubbed before the visit.