UN hopeful of Bhutto assassination investigation

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday he is hopeful a U.N. commission will be established in the near future to investigate the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

On the eve of Saturday's first anniversary of Bhutto's assassination, Ban assured the Pakistani people and government of his commitment to search for truth and justice.

Bhutto died in a gun and suicide bomb attack on Dec. 27, 2007 as she was leaving a rally in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, just outside the capital of Islamabad, where she was campaigning to return her Pakistan People's Party to power in parliamentary elections.

Her assassination shocked the world, fanning revulsion at rising militant violence in Pakistan as well as conspiracy theories that the country's's powerful spy agencies were involved.

The government at the time, led by President Pervez Musharraf, blamed Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistani militant commander with reported links to al-Qaida, citing a communications intercept in which Mehsud allegedly congratulated some of his henchmen. A Mehsud spokesman has denied any involvement.

Musharraf's government said Bhutto died from the force of the blast and not a gunshot wound but many of Pakistan's 160 million people, already skeptical of Musharraf, questioned that account.

Bhutto's party demanded a U.N. probe, and her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, who became Pakistan's president after parliamentary elections in February, lobbied for a U.N. inquiry.

Ban agreed to Pakistan's request for a U.N.-authorized independent probe into Bhutto's killing after a meeting in July with Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

The secretary-general said broad agreement was reached on the commission's funding and membership, and on its unfettered access to information, but he said additional talks were needed with Pakistan and U.N. officials to hammer out all the details.

U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said Friday that the U.N. Secretariat "has been in consultations with the government of Pakistan to determine the nature of the commission, the scope of its mandate and the modalities for its establishment."

"The Secretariat has also been in consultations on this matter with members of the United Nations Security Council," she said.

The U.N.'s most powerful body must authorize any U.N. investigating commission.

"The secretary-general is hopeful that, with the progression of the discussions, the commission could be established in the near future," Okabe said.