Pakistan asks British aid in probe

Pummeled by international and domestic skepticism over his government’s version of events surrounding Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, President Pervez Musharraf announced Wednesday that Pakistan had invited Scotland Yard to help investigate the killing.

In his first major address to the nation since Bhutto was slain Dec. 27, Musharraf also defended the decision to delay parliamentary elections that were to have taken place Jan. 8. Rioting in the wake of the Bhutto assassination, he said, had left the security situation too precarious to proceed as scheduled.

Leaders of the major opposition parties denounced the postponement of the vote to Feb. 18 but said they would participate in the balloting under protest. Western governments generally regard the vote, which will be Pakistan’s first parliamentary election in more than five years, as an essential milestone in the move toward full civilian rule.

Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999, stepped down as army chief in November and took office as a civilian president. But pro-democracy critics remain angry over his 6-week-long imposition of emergency rule, which ended in mid-December. During that time, he suspended the constitution, jailed thousands of opposition activists, fired senior judges and imposed curbs on independent broadcast outlets.

The assassination of Bhutto, an opposition leader and former prime minister, generated a new wave of fury against Musharraf.

After Musharraf’s address, Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto’s widower, who has taken the reins of her Pakistan People’s Party, declared on national television that the party would participate in the vote, and that people should “express their anger through their ballots.”

Zardari has called repeatedly for an international investigation of Bhutto’s slaying, sharply questioning statements made by Musharraf’s government about the circumstances of the attack.

In his half-hour speech, Musharraf refrained from repeating the much-derided statement made by his Interior Ministry last week that Bhutto had not suffered any gunshot wounds and died due to a skull fracture sustained when the force of the suicide bomb a few yards from her armored SUV caused her to strike her head on the lever of the sunroof. She was standing in the vehicle and waving to supporters from the sunroof at the time of the attack.

Musharraf said new evidence had since emerged, including videos, still photos and witness statements, that investigators would take into account. Some images show a gunman firing toward Bhutto. They also show a second man believed to have set off the explosion seconds later.

Critics say crucial physical evidence has already been destroyed by police who hosed down the site of the blast within 90 minutes after it occurred, and that doctors have been intimidated into recanting statements that they believed Bhutto had died of gunshot wounds to the neck and head. No autopsy was performed.

In life, Bhutto’s relationship with Musharraf was highly fraught. She had spent much of the last year in power-sharing talks with him that broke down in November after he twice placed her under house arrest when she tried to hold rallies to protest the imposition of emergency rule.

Musharraf did not travel to Bhutto’s ancestral hometown for the funeral or during the three days of official mourning. Zardari said the president would not have been welcome, and mourners paying tribute at the family tomb frequently burst out into impassioned anti-Musharraf slogans. At one point, Zardari referred to the ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, as the “assassins’ league.”

Many of Bhutto’s supporters blame the government, at the very least, for failing to safeguard her security. Bhutto had blamed rogue elements within the government for complicity in a previous attempt to kill her with a massive suicide bomb when she returned to Pakistan in October after eight years of self-imposed exile.

In his speech, Musharraf appeared to be trying to defuse some of the rage directed at him by Bhutto’s supporters. He referred to the “martyred” former prime minister in respectful tones, saying that her mission had been to promote democracy and fight terrorism.

“I assure you that is my mission as well,” he said.

In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, the Pakistani government rebuffed international offers of assistance. But Western diplomats said Musharraf’s government had been quietly but strongly urged over the last several days to reverse that stance.

The Bush administration, Musharraf’s chief patron, praised the Pakistani leader for agreeing to accept help with the inquiry. American officials said the U.S. too had offered assistance. But it was decided that given the close U.S. ties to Musharraf, British assistance would be less problematic.

Scotland Yard said in a statement that it was dispatching a small team from the Metropolitan Police’s Counterterrorism Command, and Britain’s Foreign Office said the group would leave for Pakistan by week’s end.

The Pakistani government has accused Baitullah Mahsud, a Taliban leader believed to be linked to Al Qaeda, of masterminding the assassination. Musharraf did not directly repeat the assertion, but cited extremist leaders like Mahsud as the greatest threat facing the country.

“We need to fight terrorism with full force, and if we don’t succeed, the future of Pakistan will be dark,” he said.

Rioting that broke out in the days following Bhutto’s death, particularly in her home province of Sindh, has subsided, leaving nearly 60 people dead and millions of dollars in property damage. But Musharraf made it clear that he would use authoritarian measures to quell any new outbreak of unrest, saying that army troops and elite paramilitary forces would be used to maintain order during the election campaign and perhaps afterward.

Opposition leaders alleged that the government was reluctant to let the vote proceed on schedule because it feared that burgeoning anti-government sentiment, together with sympathy for Bhutto’s bereaved party, would translate into a big defeat for it at the ballot box.

In the eastern city of Lahore, about 50 people gathered for a candlelight vigil Wednesday in front of a Muslim shrine in the Old City. They chanted slogans such as “How many Bhuttos will you kill? From every home a Bhutto will emerge!”

Others called out: “Musharraf, dog! Musharraf, killer!”

The other main opposition party, that of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, condemned the vote delay but said it would participate in the balloting. “The postponement is to facilitate the king’s party,” said Sharif aide Pervaiz Rashid, referring to the ruling party.

Human rights organizations said a delayed vote could give an unfair advantage to Musharraf’s supporters. Before her death, Bhutto had accused the government of laying plans for large-scale vote-rigging.

“There is a very real danger that the delay will be used to manipulate the political process and rig elections to ensure victory for government-backed candidates,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch.

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laura.king@latimes.com henry.chu@latimes.com

King reported from Islamabad and Chu from Lahore. Times staff writer Kim Murphy in London contributed to this report.