Bhutto killing: US to press Mush for FBI probe
Islamabad,
Dec
29:
A
senior
US
official
in
Washington
has
said
that
there
was
some
debate
within
the
Bush
Administration
over
whether
to
press
President
Pervez
Musharraf
to
open
the
investigation
to
law
enforcement
officials
from
outside
Pakistan,
including
the
F.B.I.
As pressure grew for an independent inquiry, the Pakistan Government said that two high-level investigations were being conducted: One led by a senior High Court judge, and the other by high-level police and intelligence officials, the New York Times reported. The government identified militant leader Baitullah Mehsud as the chief suspect behind the attack. "We have an intercept from this morning in which he congratulated his people for carrying out this act," Interior Ministry spokesman, Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, said.
"We have irrefutable evidence that al Qaeda and its networks are trying to destabilise the government," he added. "They have been systematically attacking our government, and now a political icon." Bhutto, he said, was on the hit list of al Qaeda and other terrorists.
However, many of Bhutto's supporters openly blamed the Musharraf regime for her death, where as the Interior Ministry surprised everyone by saying that Bhutto had died not from gunshots or shrapnel, but from a skull fracture.
The death of Bhutto has left Pakistan's politics teetering on a knife's edge, and the prospect of elections uncertain, the NYT said.
ANI
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