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Benazir had told U.K. of plot

LONDON: The former Pakistan Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, had told the British government that she feared there was a plot to kill her on her return to Pakistan and her concerns were conveyed to Islamabad, The Sunday Times has reported.

In a front-page report, the newspaper said that Benazir had met Foreign Secretary David Miliband shortly before she returned to Pakistan in October and “warned him of a plot against her life”.

“Bhutto and Miliband had spoken regularly on the telephone since that meeting and her concerns about her safety were passed on to the Pakistani authorities,” it said.

There has been a great deal of criticism that despite being aware of the risks to her life, Britain and America backed Benazir’s return to Pakistan as part of a deal with President Pervez Musharraf to give his regime a semblance of democratic legitimacy.

Meanwhile, Benazir’s friend and biographer Christina Lamb said that she wanted her teenaged son Bilawal, who is studying at Oxford, to complete his education before plunging into politics.

“Although she would have liked him to lead the party, she did not want him to feel compelled to do so or make the kind of sacrifices that she had to make when her father was executed,” she wrote on Sunday.

Ms Lamb, who was travelling with Benazir at the time of the Karachi blast in October, said that she was shaken by the bombing and considered scaling down her public appearances but soon changed her mind, arguing that in Pakistan people wanted to see their leaders.

“Our power base in the PPP are the poor and dispossessed — they don’t have televisions or computers. They need to see us,” Benazir said.

Ms Lamb described her as the “bravest person I have ever met and, for all her flaws, she was still the best hope for her country.”

“Miracles can happen… I believe in miracles”, this was how Benazir had reacted to the prospect of returning to Pakistan after her eight-year-long exile.

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