Posted on 01/02/2008 8:53:41 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States on Wednesday brushed aside calls for a UN investigation into the slaying of Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, saying Britain's Scotland Yard now leads the probe and will get "the answers" Pakistan's people deserve.
"Scotland Yard being in the lead of this investigation is appropriate and necessary and we don't see a need for an investigation beyond that at this time," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters.
"What's most important is that they proceed quickly and in a transparent and comprehensive way, so that the people of Pakistan can get the answers they deserve," the spokeswoman said.
Perino also cautiously welcomed Pakistan setting February 18 as the date for parliamentary elections, which had previously been scheduled for January 8 but put off after Bhutto's assassination in a gun and suicide bomb attack last Thursday.
"The important thing is that they have a date certain for the elections," Perino said shortly before Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf gave a major televised speech to defend the postponement and unveil the British role.
Asked whether the United States worried that the election might not be free and fair, Perino replied: "We have no indication that it wouldn't be, but of course, we'll continue to monitor."
The spokeswoman also sidestepped a question regarding the White House's refusal over the past few days to express confidence in a Bhutto slaying investigation run by Musharraf's government.
"It was the Pakistani government that decided to ask Scotland Yard for its help, and we think that was appropriate, and we welcome that decision," said Perino. "We think they'll do an excellent job."
"We urge the political parties that are there to ask their followers to refrain from violence, to look to the investigation that Scotland Yard will produce that will be transparent and fair and hopefully move ahead as quickly as possible," she said.
Perino had been asked why Washington pushed hard for a UN special investigation into the February 2005 killing of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri but was not doing so in the case of Bhutto's assassination last week.
Amid charges from Bhutto allies that Musharraf's government had mishandled the probe thus far, Perino said "maybe what happened after the assassination will be a part of the investigation."
But she seemed at odds with Musharraf and Scotland Yard itself on the Britons' role: She said they were in the lead, while he said they would "help" and the venerable crimefighting service said Pakistan was still in charge.
Perino also said that she was unaware of charges by Bhutto allies that she was killed as she planned to go public just hours before her death with evidence of plans to rig the vote.
Her comments came after Benazir Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, demanded a UN probe into her assassination along the lines of the Hariri investigation.
"We demand a Hariri commission-style investigation," he said at a news conference Sunday. "We are writing to the United Nations for an international probe into her martyrdom."
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack renewed Washington's offer to help out with the probe.
"We stand ready to assist, if we are requested to do so. If we can provide technical assistance and that is wanted, of course we are going to do so," McCormack told reporters.
“We have no indication that it wouldn’t be, but of course, we’ll continue to monitor.”
And we’ll be sending our best green berets over to help make sure of that (not spoken)
ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Scotland Yard's investigators may not have much to work with in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, leading to an inquiry that raises more questions than answers, analysts say.
They say the arrival from London of one of the world's most famous police squads is likely to make little difference in a country with a long tradition of political murders and an equally long tradition of failing to solve them.
President Pervez Musharraf said Wednesday the Yard would help get to the bottom of the opposition leader's assassination, which happened under the noses of reputedly one of the most formidable intelligence and security services in the world.
But in Pakistan, whose agencies exercise a hold on every corner of daily life, the announcement could be little more than a belated effort at damage control, analysts say.
"This was basically an attempt to build bridges and calm the situation," said Nasim Zehra, an author and visiting fellow at the Harvard University Asia Center.
"(Musharraf) knows what a major catastrophe has hit the nation and how horribly and how clumsily the government has handled it," Zehra told AFP. "It has ended up completely showing the government's incompetence."
A senior government official, who could not be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, said there might not be much the Scotland Yard team can do.
"They will come here and ask for two things. Do you have a post-mortem report? Do you know the cause of death? They will ask for a detailed post-mortem report -- and we don't have any," the official said.
"I seriously do not think there is anything for them to investigate."
The official account of Bhutto's death appeared to unravel almost as soon as it was presented, fuelling conspiracy theories in a nation already awash in them -- and magnifying a feeling of outrage.
The government said the gunman shot and missed, but Bhutto aides swore they saw bullet wounds on her body. It said she died banging her head on her car sunroof, but videos and pictures called that explanation into question.
The government summoned local papers to clarify its stance. But when they reported officials had apologised for the sunroof explanation, the government clarified its clarification. There had been no apology, it said.
After news reports said the crime scene was washed clean within hours of Bhutto's killing, many here saw sinister intent and not bureaucratic bumbling, and looked anew at government forces blamed for bloodshed in the past.
"People saw (Musharraf) as somebody who failed to protect her, someone who failed to investigate the murder properly and then jumped to conclusions," said Shafqat Mahmood, a political analyst and newspaper columnist.
"Many people consider him complicit, if not in the murder itself, then by implication, because of the lack of security for Bhutto."
While the government back-and-forth may have been a public relations failure in the face of a mournful and angry nation, however, analysts agree the list of those who would have wanted to see Bhutto eliminated is almost endless.
"Such murders do not get solved," political analyst Hasan Askari told AFP this week before the Musharraf speech. "They remain open forever."
The army has been at odds with the Bhutto family since her father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, then prime minister, sacked a clutch of top generals after Pakistan lost Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, in a 1971 war with India.
He was toppled in 1977 and hanged by a military regime two years later.
Opponents of Musharraf, including Bhutto, accused him of being a military dictator before the general-president retired from the army just weeks ago.
Bhutto reportedly left behind a letter, to be released if she came to an untimely end, blaming Musharraf for failing to provide for her safety. She had survived a twin suicide attack in October that left 139 people dead.
The government has rubbished any suggestion of blame. When a US newspaper cited Hillary Clinton noting how Bhutto had been killed in Rawalpindi, home to army headquarters, the foreign ministry said the paper "twisted" her remarks.
The country's alphabet soup of Islamic militant groups meanwhile opposed a pro-Western Muslim woman who spoke out against extremists and vowed to crush them if she ever came to power again.
Despite the chaotic aftermath of Bhutto's killing and pressure from Clinton and otherd, the government ruled out the international UN-led inquiry that her husband Asif Ali Zardari demanded.
Analysts say the United States, which has relied on Musharraf as a pivotal ally ever since the September 11, 2001 attacks, would be unwilling to allow a UN probe that could embarrass a close partner in the "war on terror".
Reacting after Musharraf's speech, the White House said Scotland Yard would "lead" the inquiry, although the Pakistani leader had never said that.
At the same time, it ruled out a UN inquiry -- "we don't see a need for an investigation beyond that at this time," a spokeswoman said.
I’m gl;ad Scotland Yard is there.
They have been known to succumb to political intrigue on high profile investigative work which has an international component, taking cues from Whitehall.
They royally botched their investigation into the death of Princess Diana, and that necessitated a Royal Commission into her death.
As far as Bhutto is concerned, she in now just another dead liberal, but dead at the wrong time. She could have been of immense help to Musharrif, and the jihadists knew it, and acted.
The real problem lies with a 5th column of jihadists in the ISI. They are just like the 5th column liberal CIA mavins here in the USA, who have now lobbied the FBI successfully into launching a probe into the destruction of so called water board torture tapes, only the ISI 5th column plays assassination games, unlike the CIA, as yet.
If the USA was Pakistan, Rove and Cheny would have been dead some time ago, at the hands of CIA idiots like Valerie Plame.
I hope that Scotland Yard has the hutzpah to investigate the ISI 5th columnists , and their hand in hand work with the jihadists who killed Pearle. Those are likely the dudes who did this Bhutto murder, acting on ISI intelligence provided them on Bhutto and her security coverage.
All the UN would do is bungle it and come up with results that it wants.
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