ISLAMABAD — A U.N. report on the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is a "pack of lies" that wrongly implicates ex-President Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan's security forces for not stopping her killing, an aide to Musharraf said Friday.
Bhutto was killed in a Dec. 27, 2007, gun and suicide-bomb attack as she was leaving a rally in Rawalpindi city, where she was campaigning to return her Pakistan People's Party to power in elections after returning from nearly nine years in self-imposed exile.
The three-member U.N. panel said her death could have been avoided if Musharraf's government and various security agencies had taken adequate measures. It also found that the probe into her death was deliberately hampered by intelligence agencies and other officials.
The report, released Thursday, was hailed by the PPP, which now governs Pakistan and is headed by President Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's widower. Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said the report backed up the People's Party's belief that Musharraf or his allies were responsible for Bhutto's death.
But Rashid Qureshi, a Musharraf aide, insisted that the U.N. report was based on rumors and that Musharraf was in no way responsible.
"This chief U.N. investigator was not the relative of Sherlock Homes," Qureshi said, noting that Musharraf himself had been the target of suicide attackers.
The head of the country's most powerful spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, warned Bhutto not to attend the rally because of looming threats of an attack, Qureshi said.
"But Benazir Bhutto and her chief security officer Rehman Malik decided to go ahead with their planned election rally," Qureshi said. "It was Benazir Bhutto who exposed herself to the attacker."
Bhutto was killed in a Dec. 27, 2007, gun and suicide-bomb attack as she was leaving a rally in Rawalpindi city, where she was campaigning to return her Pakistan People's Party to power in elections after returning from nearly nine years in self-imposed exile.
The three-member U.N. panel said her death could have been avoided if Musharraf's government and various security agencies had taken adequate measures. It also found that the probe into her death was deliberately hampered by intelligence agencies and other officials.
The report, released Thursday, was hailed by the PPP, which now governs Pakistan and is headed by President Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's widower. Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said the report backed up the People's Party's belief that Musharraf or his allies were responsible for Bhutto's death.
But Rashid Qureshi, a Musharraf aide, insisted that the U.N. report was based on rumors and that Musharraf was in no way responsible.
"This chief U.N. investigator was not the relative of Sherlock Homes," Qureshi said, noting that Musharraf himself had been the target of suicide attackers.
The head of the country's most powerful spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, warned Bhutto not to attend the rally because of looming threats of an attack, Qureshi said.
"But Benazir Bhutto and her chief security officer Rehman Malik decided to go ahead with their planned election rally," Qureshi said. "It was Benazir Bhutto who exposed herself to the attacker."
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