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Brown offers help in Benazir assassination probe

LONDON: Although Britain does not dispute the Pakistan government’s account of how the former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, died it has offered to help in the investigation into her assassination following doubts raised by her party.

The offer was made by Prime Minister Gordon Brown when he spoke to President Pervez Musharraf on Sunday as Benazir’s husband Asif Zardari announced that he was asking Britain and the United Nations to help with the investigation, saying he did not trust his own country’s police. Even before Mr. Zardari’s statement, however, Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s had said that the “full resources” of the British government would be available if needed to “get to the bottom of this terrible tragedy.” In his telephonic conversation with President Musharraf, Mr. Brown urged him to avoid any “significant delays” in holding the elections. President Musharraf reportedly agreed to consider suggestions for international support to the investigation. According to media reports, Benazir wanted to hire British and American security experts to protect her but the Pakistani government refused to allow foreign security agencies to operate in Pakistan. Benazir’s U.S. representative Mark Siegel told The Sunday Telegraph that she wanted to hire “trained security personnel from abroad.” A spokesperson of the American security firm Blackwater was reported as saying that the company was approached to provide security to Benazir but an agreement was “unfortunately never reached.”

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