Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Thursday rejected any suggestion that he or any members of the Pakistani military or intelligence agencies played a role in the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and said the attack was probably carried out by the same extremists responsible for a number of suicide bombings in recent months.
Taking questions from foreign journalists at the Presidential House, Musharraf defended his police force and investigators, saying that Bhutto had defied the government's warnings when she decided to go ahead with the rally in Rawalpindi, where she was killed a week ago.
He added that she had broken standard security rules by standing in the open top of her vehicle as the crowd swarmed around her and by not leaving the rally quickly.
In a televised question and answer session that lasted more than 90 minutes, Musharraf appeared relaxed and confident, telling journalists that they often got their facts wrong and that they did not understand the situation.
He denied that he was unpopular in the country and dismissed the accusation from Bhutto's party that he was delaying elections by six weeks to give his people time to rig them. He said he wanted elections as soon as possible.
"There is no complicity" in Bhutto's killing, he said. "Would I or the government be the maximum gainer from doing this? Or would there be someone else who would gain more?"
He said that in the past three months there had been 19 suicide bombings by the militant leaders Baitullah Mehsud and Maulana Fazlullah.
Most of the attacks were against military and intelligence targets, he said, calling it a "joke" to suggest the military and intelligence agencies would be using the same people who were attacking them.
"No intelligence organization of Pakistan is capable of indoctrinating a man to blow himself up," he said.
Meanwhile, a team of British police arrived yesterday to join the investigation into Bhutto's death.
The small Scotland Yard team arrived at Islamabad airport, but members declined to comment.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS