Wed, Jan 02, 2008 page1

• Bhutto wanted to hand US officials dossier on fraud

  • AP AND AFP
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  On the day she was killed, Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto intended to give two US lawmakers a dossier accusing the ruling regime and Pakistan's intelligence service of rigging upcoming elections, an aide said yesterday.

  Senator Latif Khosa, a lawmaker from Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), said she planned to meet representatives Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island last Thursday evening, a few hours after the rally where she was killed.

  She was preparing to give them a 160-page report of complaints on "pre-poll rigging" the government of President Pervez Musharraf and the military-run Inter-services Intelligence Service (ISI) was engaged in, Khosa said.

  "[She] herself was supposed to give it to them," said Khosa who, as head of the party's election team, wrote the report.

  Khosa said he did not know if Bhutto's assassination was linked to the report.

  "The elections were to be thoroughly rigged and the king's party was to benefit in the electoral process," he said, referring to the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League-Q party.

  In one case, an ISI major was sitting with an election official when the official rejected nomination papers of PPP candidates, he said. Another official stopped a candidate from filing his nomination in the southwestern Baluchistan Province, Khosa said.

  Meanwhile, US officials said on Monday the US had provided a steady stream of intelligence to Bhutto about threats against her before she was assassinated and advised her aides on how to boost security, although key suggestions appeared to have gone unheeded.

  Senior US diplomats had multiple conversations, including at least two private face-to-face meetings, with top members of the PPP to discuss threats on the Pakistani opposition leader's life and review her security arrangements after a suicide bombing marred her initial return to Pakistan from exile in October, the officials said on Monday.

  The intelligence was also shared with the Pakistani government, the officials said.

  Much of what was passed on dealt with general threats from Taliban extremists and al-Qaeda sympathizers and "was not actionable information."

  The officials said Bhutto and her aides were concerned, particularly after the October attack, but were adamant that in the absence of a specific and credible threat there would be few, if any, changes to her campaign schedule ahead of parliamentary elections.

  "She knew people were trying to assassinate her," an intelligence official said. "We don't hold information back on possible attacks on foreign leaders and foreign countries."

  The official said, however, that while the US could share the information, "it's up to [the recipient] how they want to take action."

  A senior election official said yesterday that Pakistan would delay elections until next month to give officials more time to prepare after the unrest that followed Bhutto's assassination.

  But with the government facing calls from the US not to put off the Jan. 8 vote too long and opposition parties arguing against a delay, the official said the election commission could not hold off longer than that.

  "Elections will not be delayed beyond February. We expect it to be towards the later part of next month," the official said.

  The commission was to make the announcement public later in the day but was holding an urgent meeting yesterday morning to review security reports from around the country before deciding on the exact date, the official said.

  "We want the delay to be minimal. But the election commission needs a realistic amount of time to get things back on track," he said.

  Also See: EDITORIAL: Musharraf's empty promisesAlso See: Pakistan without Benazir Bhutto
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