Slain Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto's much-talked about last book, which speaks of her vision for the Islamic world, will be launched in Washington on February 20. The book, which the former premier put together with the help of her long-time friend and associate Mark Siegel in the last few months of her life, will be released at the National Press Club. It will feature a short afterword by Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zardari and their children.
Asked if he would agree to a power-sharing deal with Musharraf, Zardari told a magazine: "It's too early and our wounds are too deep to think of having any working relationship with the ruling party or President Pervez Musharraf."
'The resolve has to be there, the will has to be there. Above all, our top leadership has to adopt a statesman-like approach' says Pakistan's Interior Minister Faisal Hayat.
Saying it was below his dignity to answer a question about whether he had 'blood on his hands', Musharraf said he was brought up in a very educated and civilised family with beliefs and values.
On a question regarding the difficulties faced by tribal people in Naxal-affected areas, Antony said steps had been taken to solve their problems and the issue was discussed at the meeting of chief ministers convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently.
Bridging an increasingly diverse West with the Islamic world was Benazir's dream and agenda.
Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday hinted that his Pakistan Muslim League- N party may not be averse to an alliance with Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party in the forthcoming general elections. Sharif said that the PML-N and the PPP can explore the possibility of a coalition government after the elections. the PML-N had decided to boycott elections to express solidarity with the PPP following Bhutto's assassination. But it reversed the decision later.
The Pakistani tennis ace had to miss out on the Chennai Open singles qualifying and did not have a doubles partner to choose from.
Is Benazir Bhutto one of the outstanding leaders of our sub-continent, who always looked for reconciliation between India and Pakistan?
Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest next to her father's grave in this ancestral village on Friday, a day after she was assassinated in Rawalpindi. Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zardari, son Bilawal and two daughters -- Bhaktawar and Asia -- were present when her body was lowered in a grave at the family's white-domed mausoleum after funeral prayers. The body was earlier placed in a plain wooden coffin draped in the black, green and red flag of her Pakistan People's Party.
The seeds for the family's brush with tragedy were sown when Benazir's father and former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was hanged on April 4, 1979. Bhutto's end came after worldwide appeals for clemency were dismissed by the then acting President Gen Zia ul Haq.
Dr Singh said Bhutto's contributions to a previous moment of hope in India-Pakistan relations and her intent to break the relations out of the sterile patterns of the past were 'exemplary.'
"If anyone kept their word, it was me, not Rajiv. He went back to India and then called me on his way to the Commonwealth to say that he could not keep his promise to withdraw from Siachen, and that he would do it only after the elections (1989)," Bhutto said.
Sharif, who had on Monday joined hands with his political rival and Pakistan People's Party leader Benazir Bhutto to set conditions for free and fair polls, addressed supporters of his PML-N party at several places in the North West Frontier Province on Tuesday.
Bhutto had earlier said that her party would contest the polls 'under protest', while Sharif has backed the All Parties Democratic Movement's decision to boycott the polls.
'The Opposition -- they have all along these five years tried to destabilise me and the government. We do not want agitation here. We are going in for politics; we do not want agitational politics. That cannot be allowed. So, therefore, if anyone is trying to do that, we will stop it.'
Upping the ante, former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto Tuesday asked Pervez Musharraf to quit as President saying the days of dictatorship in Pakistan were over. "We say Musharraf must leave. The time for dictatorship is over. It's time to bring a transfer to democracy," Bhutto told Britain's Sky News in a telephonic interview from Lahore, where police have placed her under house arrest to stop her from leading an anti-emergency rally to Islamabad.
In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer from her home in Karachi, when asked if she feared that she was also about to be arrested among several other opposition figures in Pakistan, Benazir said, "I hope that Gen Musharraf won't take that stand, but I can't rule it out."
The former premier left for Dubai a day after telling reporters that she was postponing the visit as she feared that the Pakistan government would impose emergency during her absence.
Former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto has received a death threat from female suicide bombers, one of her close aides said on Tuesday.
The US government should prepare a contingency plan for Pakistan in case the Pervez Musharraf regime falls because of the presence of nuclear weapons in the country, a top Opposition lawmaker has said while warning that the Islamic country was in for "a very rough period". Democrat Jane Harman, who is in the House Intelligence Panel, also said "more could have been done" to prevent the bombing of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's motorcade.
The suicide bomber who tried to assassinate former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto had tried to break through her security cordon by bringing a box of cotton buds that she had requested, but was turned away twice.
Former Pakistan premier Benazir Bhutto said she does not blame the government for the terrorist attack on her homecoming parade in Karachi.
Brig Ejaz Shah has been strongly criticised by Benazir and her supporters for the security failure and they have demanded his removal and arrest. When he was in the ISI, he used to be the handling officer of Osama bin Laden and Mulla Omar
Born on June 21, 1953, into a wealthy landowning family in southern Pakistan, the mother of three children inherited the heavy political legacy of her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was hanged by Gen Zia in 1979.
'The eight-mile drive from the airport to the Minar-i-Pakistan in Iqbal Park usually takes 15 minutes. On the unbelievable day of April 10, 1986, it took us ten hours,' Bhutto recalls in her 1988 memoir Daughter of the East.
The Pakistan government has said that former prime minister Benazir Bhutto will convey her final plan of return to the country on Tuesday. The government has been asking the Pakistan People's Party chief, who is living in a self-imposed exile, to delay her return scheduled for October 18. A minister clarified that the government has no intention to block her on return as a better understanding already existed between the PPP and the government.
Aides of President Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan People's Party leader Benazir Bhutto will be holding a final round of talks in the United Arab Emirates from Tuesday to "devise a strategy for the coming general election," a media report said. The talks were earlier scheduled after Eid-ul-Fitr, but after Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and PML-N president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain ruled out any truck with the PPP for the polls, the meetings were urgently arranged.
'Musharraf presented me with a plan about how mujahideen would infiltrate an area like Kargil.' Former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto tells Shyam Bhatia.
British and the US diplomats have met with leaders of a political party long at odds with Bhutto and encouraged it to show restraint when she returns to Karachi on October 18, according to The Independent.
The religious parties, Bhutto added, have gained strength within Pakistan and "today control two of our most important provinces that border Afghanistan."
Self-exiled former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto has said that she wanted to see a treaty between India and Pakistan in the 60th year of their Independence that "promises" peace for the coming generations.
Bhutto arrived in London on Saturday from Geneva where she had appeared before a court on Friday in connection with a money laundering case.
Maintaining distance on the political developments in Pakistan, the US has once again said that it is up to the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto to decide on her future political steps.
Bhutto, who has been living in self-imposed exile in London, said that the militants Pakistan "nurtured" during the Afghan war against the Soviet Union had returned to haunt them.
The Pakistan Peoples Party chief, who is in self-imposed exile, kept her hopes alive on reaching an agreement with Musharraf despite breakdown in talks, saying the "window is not totally shut."
Bhutto wanted prime ministers to have a third term. Musharraf rejected the condition.
The opposition leader said Musharraf's refusal to form a commission to probe the Kargil debacle was self serving and untenable.
The deputy spokesman was non-committal on the US's position on whether Musharraf should step down from his army post.
Slain former premier Benazir Bhutto's daughter Bakhtawar has said she wants to serve the people of Pakistan like her mother but was not sure if she wanted to join politics. eventeen-year-old Bakhtawar, who is at school in Dubai, said those who killed her mother feared her mission. She pledged to continue the mission of her mother, who was assassinated in December last year.
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