PAKISTAN: Former PM Benazir Bhutto vows not to give up her campaign to establish democracy in Pakistan despite the suicide attack on her motorcade

Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto said on Friday (October 19) she would carry on her struggle for democracy, despite an attack on her motorcade that killed 133 people as she returned home after eight years of exile. "We want to avoid bloodshed. We want to avoid loss of life, but I also want to say that if it means sacrificing our lives, if it means sacrificing our liberty, to save Pakistan, and to save democracy because we believe that only democracy alone can save Pakistan from disintegration and a militant takeover, then we are prepared to risk our lives, and we are prepared to risk our liberty. But we are not prepared to surrender our great nation to the militants," Bhutto, wearing a black armband, told a news conference at the home of her parents-in-laws in Karachi. "They're killing our armed forces in the tribal areas of Pakistan, they're knocking on the doors of the Frontier Province," Bhutto said, referring to a deepening conflict near the border with Afghanistan where Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are based. The 54-year-old former prime minister returned on Thursday to lead her Pakistan People's Party into national elections due in January that are meant to mark a transition from military to civilian-led democracy. The grenade and suicide attack struck Bhutto's motorcade as it edged through hundreds of thousands of well-wishers who had stayed up late into the night to welcome the two-time prime minister back to Pakistan after years of self-imposed exile. Bhutto, travelling in a truck reinforced to withstand bomb attacks, was unhurt by one of the deadliest bomb attacks in her country's violent history. The attack underscored the turbulence which lay in store for Pakistan ahead of the elections but it was unclear how the assassination attempt might affect a possible power-sharing deal between Bhutto and President Pervez Musharraf. Army chief General Musharraf condoled with his potential ally by telephone from Islamabad and they both "expressed their unflinching resolve to fight the scourge of extremism and terrorism", the president's spokesman Rashid Quereshi said. There was no claim of responsibility and well-known Pakistani Taliban commander Baoti aj Mehsud, said to have issued assassination threats against Bhutto earlier this month, denied any involvement. Mehsud, who operates in Waziristan, a tribal region on the border with Afghanistan that has become a centre of al Qaeda and Taliban activity, had been widely reported as issuing threats against Bhutto after she announced plans to return to Pakistan. The government said police were investigating whether the attack had links to tribal regions bordering Afghanistan which have become hotbeds of support for al Qaeda and the Taliban. The ministry said 133 people had been killed and 290 wounded, in what was the second most deadly suicide bombing of 2007, and most deadly outside a war-zone.

ITN Source | October 20, 2007

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