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Supporters celebrate Bhutto's birthday

Supporters of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto are commemorating her 55th birthday in mournful ceremonies in Pakistan.

Dozens of somber-looking men are gathering Saturday at her mausoleum near her hometown of Naudero to offer prayers. Some men are carrying large Bhutto portraits and demanding the arrest of her killers.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s new government renamed the international airport in the capital Islamabad after Bhutto.

Bhutto, whose party heads the ruling coalition, was killed in a suicide gun and bomb attack after she addressed an election rally in the garrison town of Rawalpindi on Dec. 27.

Bhutto’s party has planned gatherings across Pakistan on Saturday to celebrate her life and political martyrdom, while her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, was due to attend a ceremony at her ancestral village of Garhi Khuda Baksh, where she is buried.

A wave of sympathy helped Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party win the February 18 election.

“She is not amongst us today, yet she lives in the hearts and memory of the people of Pakistan,” Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said in a statement issued on the eve of her 55th birthday after he had renamed Islamabad International airport as Benazir Bhutto International.

The airport is actually on the outskirts in Rawalpindi, Islamabad’s larger neighbor.

The Rawalpindi hospital where Bhutto was taken after the attack was also renamed after her as was the main road linking the city to the nearby hill resort of Murree.

Pakistan has formally requested a UN investigation into Bhutto’s assassination.

President Pervez Musharraf, whose allies were defeated in the February elections, has opposed a UN investigation and the previous government blamed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud of being behind the conspiracy to kill Bhutto.

The PPP harbors deep suspicion over the official findings and doubts whether Mehsud, who has denied involvement, was the real culprit.
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