Benazir

Benazir Bhutto, the first woman to head the government of a Muslim country, is also the fourth, returning to office in Pakistan where she was deposed in 1990. Turkey and Bangladesh adopted woman prime ministers in the interim.She is the Pakistani politician who best communicates with the common people, many of whom revere her. She is the one who best communicates with the West, thanks to her Harvard and Oxford education. But she is the one who communicates worst with the army generals and religious mullahs, who may constitute the real, as opposed to apparent, government.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The party of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto picked a respected but lesser-known party leader yesterday as its candidate for prime minister, a move that analysts and some party insiders said could pave the way for Bhutto's widower to seek the job in a few months. Yousuf Raza Gillani, a former assembly speaker who spent more than four years in jail under President Pervez Musharraf, eclipsed Bhutto's deputy, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, who had been seen as the front-runner.

I interviewed Benazir Bhutto just a month before she returned to Pakistan in October after almost 10 years in exile. I'd known her for years, on and off - mostly off - since we'd been in college together, and her brother, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, had been a good friend of mine there too. To be a Bhutto seemed - to us outsiders - the essence of glamorous progressivism. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, their father, was the democratically inclined president of Pakistan, and we thought of the Bhutto family as Pakistan's Kennedys.

WASHINGTON -- The CIA thinks that Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mahsud and his associates, some of them linked to al-Qaida, were responsible for the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto last month, a U.S. intelligence official said Thursday. "There are strong indications that Baitullah Mahsud was behind the Bhutto assassination," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. "There is certainly no reason to doubt that Mahsud was behind this."

THE FIRST woman prime minister of an Islamic country, Benazir Bhutto disappointed all who thought she might bring stability, democracy, human rights and peace to Pakistan. She did not.Deposed by the president of Pakistan for the second time, eight years after her first election, Ms. Bhutto is only 43 and as bright and persuasive as ever. She will be, as she has defiantly made clear, heard from again.President Farooq Leghari, a former supporter, gave compelling reasons for dismissing her, including the reign of murder in Karachi, rampant corruption and her power struggle with an independent judiciary.

Extremism looms as a threat, but it will be contained as it has been in the past if the moderate middle can be mobilized to stand up to fanaticism. I return to lead that battle."

The attack: Former Pakistani prime minister and current opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was struck down 12 days before parliamentary elections as an unknown gunman opened fire and then blew himself up, killing 20 other people. The aftermath: Enraged crowds rioted across Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf (left) reportedly weighed canceling the election as another opposition leader announced a boycott of the poll. PG 6A

NAUDERO, Pakistan -- Benazir Bhutto left a last will and testament that maps out the future for her political party and who should lead it in her absence, her husband, Asif Zardari, disclosed yesterday. The document will be presented to her Pakistan People's Party today. It's expected to include her preference for who should lead the party in her absence. Zardari himself would be a highly controversial contender. Their son, Bilawal, would win a huge amount of goodwill but is still a teenager, and Zardari appeared to rule him out yesterday.

KARACHI, Pakistan -- The most famous residence in Pakistan is the walled compound at 70 Clifton Road, the house of the Bhuttos, perhaps Pakistan's most famous and most troubled family.This was the home of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was prime minister until he was overthrown and hanged in 1979. And the home of his son Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed a few yards outside the entrance in a shootout last year with police. And the home of his daughter Benazir Bhutto, who spent months there under house arrest and then twice became prime minister.

April 4, 1979: Benazir Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, is executed for the murder of a political opponent, two years after his ouster as prime minister in a military coup. April 10, 1986: Benazir Bhutto returns from exile in London to lead the Pakistan People's Party, founded by her father. Dec. 1, 1988: Bhutto, age 35, wins parliamentary elections to become the first female prime minister of a Muslim nation. Aug. 6, 1990: President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismisses Bhutto's government, citing corruption and a failure to control ethnic violence.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Two new reports on the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto last month suggest that the killing might have been a plot rather than an isolated act of violence and that the government of President Pervez Musharraf knows far more than it has admitted. A police officer who witnessed the assassination said a mysterious crowd stopped Bhutto's car that day, prompting her to emerge through the sunroof. And a document has surfaced in the Pakistani news media that contradicts the government's version of her death and contains details on the pistol and the suicide bomb used in the assassination.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pummeled by international and domestic skepticism over his government's version of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, President Pervez Musharraf announced yesterday 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 by six weeks parliamentary elections that were to have taken place next Tuesday. Rioting in the wake of Bhutto's death, he said, had left the security situation too precarious to proceed as scheduled.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- On Friday, the day of Benazir Bhutto's burial in her ancestral village, Pakistanis were still struggling to grasp that she was dead. The capital city and the military seat of Rawalpindi, where she was killed, were shut up tightly, with security forces guarding key roads. Except for a few small demonstrations, the streets were silent as people stayed glued to TV scenes of her storied career and the cortege bearing her home. We will probably never know the identity of the assassins.

NAUDERO, Pakistan -- Benazir Bhutto left a last will and testament that maps out the future for her political party and who should lead it in her absence, her husband, Asif Zardari, disclosed yesterday. The document will be presented to her Pakistan People's Party today. It's expected to include her preference for who should lead the party in her absence. Zardari himself would be a highly controversial contender. Their son, Bilawal, would win a huge amount of goodwill but is still a teenager, and Zardari appeared to rule him out yesterday.

I interviewed Benazir Bhutto just a month before she returned to Pakistan in October after almost 10 years in exile. I'd known her for years, on and off - mostly off - since we'd been in college together, and her brother, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, had been a good friend of mine there too. To be a Bhutto seemed - to us outsiders - the essence of glamorous progressivism. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, their father, was the democratically inclined president of Pakistan, and we thought of the Bhutto family as Pakistan's Kennedys.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- As slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest in her ancestral village yesterday, the government of President Pervez Musharraf laid the blame for her assassination on a Taliban commander and said other politicians were also under threat. The government cited intercepted telephone conversations in pointing the finger at militant leader Baitullah Mehsud, who is believed to operate in the borderlands near Afghanistan. It also blamed him for an earlier attempt on Bhutto's life in October; after that bombing, Bhutto had said she believed rogue elements within the intelligence establishment or the security forces had colluded with Islamic militants in the attack.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of ousted Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was arrested yesterday in Karachi on charges of kidnapping a British businessman in April and extorting $800,000 from him.Mr. Zardari was denied bail by the Sind High Court, according to news agency reports.Mr. Zardari, a polo-playing businessman from a relatively obscure family in Sind province, where the Bhuttos are a powerful landowning clan, has emerged over the past year as Ms. Bhutto's gravest political liability.

Eight years after Pervez Musharraf came to power in a coup, Pakistan is undergoing a widening spurt of violence, dramatically underscored by the bomb attack Thursday on the convoy of Benazir Bhutto hours after the former prime minister returned from exile. Mr. Musharraf's control of the country is slipping, with al-Qaida and its allies demanding an Islamist state while millions of urban dwellers have been agitating for a return to secular democracy. Under pressure at home and abroad, Mr. Musharraf has been tentatively opening the door to the former civilian leadership.

April 4, 1979: Benazir Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, is executed for the murder of a political opponent, two years after his ouster as prime minister in a military coup. April 10, 1986: Benazir Bhutto returns from exile in London to lead the Pakistan People's Party, founded by her father. Dec. 1, 1988: Bhutto, age 35, wins parliamentary elections to become the first female prime minister of a Muslim nation. Aug. 6, 1990: President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismisses Bhutto's government, citing corruption and a failure to control ethnic violence.

Benazir Bhutto's assassination yesterday poses huge dangers to Pakistan - and to every nation concerned about such issues as Islamic militancy, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the future of Afghanistan. It destroys the well-intentioned efforts of the Bush administration to foster a compromise that could lead to a restoration of democracy in Pakistan. It is also a serious blow to President Pervez Musharraf. He will be blamed for the attack, even if - as seems probable - it was carried out by forces opposed to his rule.