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Rioting and political violence following the assassination of former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto has killed 32 people, according to a toll from several officials across the country on Friday.
   Twenty-three people have died in clashes and protests in Benazir’s political heartland of southern Sindh province since her killing Thursday, provincial home secretary Ghulam Mohammad Mohtaram said.
   The army had been deployed in 16 districts of Sindh, including the main city Karachi, he said.
   Another eight people died in a bomb blast in North West Frontier Province, including a member of president Pervez Musharraf’s former ruling party, the police said.
   The remote-controlled bomb exploded as the pro-Musharraf candidate left a political rally in a suburb of Mingora, the main town in the troubled Swat Valley, which has been wracked by violence in recent months.
   A security official said one person had also died in central Punjab province.
   Rioting broke out in many cities across the country following Benazir’s death in a gun and suicide bomb attack that the government said was most likely carried out by the al-Qaeda network.
   In Rawalpindi, where Benazir was killed, protesters burned down a shopping plaza and set tyres ablaze, AFP correspondents on the scene said.
   Six people were burnt to death when a mob enraged by the assassination of Benazir torched a factory in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi on Friday, the police said.
   It was not immediately known if the victims had already been counted in the 32 deaths reported earlier by officials, as the country reeled from a spate of arson attacks, shootings and other violence since Benazir was slain on Thursday.
   ‘The mob stormed into a leather factory in the Korangi area of Karachi. They set it on fire and six labourers were burnt to death,’ the police official Latif Siddiqi said.
   The workers had stayed in the factory overnight because there was no transport to get them home, after opposition leaders called for a national strike to protest Benazir’s killing, keeping taxis and buses off the roads.
   Siddiqi said rioters also burnt down a BMW car showroom and ransacked a medicine factory and a private hospital in the same area of the city, Pakistan’s largest and the economic hub of the country.
   Analysts agonised over the future of Pakistan, beset by chronic instability and extremist violence.
   Pakistan People’s Party supporters clashed with the police in the federal capital and its twin city of Rawalpindi.
   In the first major protests in Islamabad, PPP workers gathered for funeral prayers for Benazir near the parliament house. Clashes erupted when the police attempted to disperse them, a news channel reported.
   PPP workers also clashed with police in the nearby garrison city of Rawalpindi, where Benazir was assassinated.
   The police fired in the air and used teargas to disperse the protesters who were trying to burn tyres to block roads.
   At least PPP workers were injured in the clashes in Rawalpindi, which had witnessed violent protests Thursday night too.
   There were also protests on Thursday in the Aabpara commercial area near Lal Masjid in Islamabad.
   Protesters, most of them workers of PPP, vandalised commercial properties and shops, burnt trains and railways stations and clashed with police at many places. Much of their ire was directed against the offices and property of the ruling PML-Q party that backs President Pervez Musharraf.
   A ‘shoot on sight’ order was issued in Benazir’s home province of Sindh after unidentified gunmen shot dead a policeman and wounded three in the southern city of Karachi.
   ‘Yes, shoot on sight anybody who wants to damage the life of innocent citizens and public property,’ the provincial interior minister, Akhtar Zaman, told Reuters on Friday.
   The streets of Karachi, capital of Sindh and Pakistan’s biggest city, were largely deserted on Friday with shops shuttered and paramilitary troops and police patrolling.
   With taxis and buses off the streets, many people travelled on foot, carrying bags on their heads and backs from the railway station and airport.
   ‘Since Thursday night a lot of damage has been caused. Shops, cars and government buildings are being burnt,’ said senior Karachi police official Azhar Ali Farooqi.
   ‘We’re trying to control the situation but emotions are running high,’ he said.
   Violence erupted in different parts of the country on Thursday as news of former prime minister Benazir’s death spread.
   But worst affected was Sindh, where hospital officials said four people were killed in the capital, Karachi, late on Thursday and early on Friday.
   Fires blazed across the interior of Sindh, Benazir’s main bastion of support.
   A Reuters reporter travelling from Karachi to the Bhuttos’ home district of Larkana said he had seen hundreds of smouldering vehicles and many shops set alight.
   Protesters had also set fire to a stationary train.
   ‘More and more people are joining the protests. Groups of youths have blocked almost all roads in and around Larkana with burning tyres,’ he said.
   Protesters shouted slogans against Benazir’s old rival, president Pervez Musharraf.
   Benazir’s party said it would observe 40 days of mourning while another opposition leader and former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, called for a nationwide strike on Friday.
   In the north-western city of Peshawar two offices of pro-Musharraf political parties were torched, a witness said.
   Protesters in the south-western province of Baluchistan set fire to a railway station, several banks, government vehicles and offices of a pro-Musharraf party, the police said.
   In Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan’s portion of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, protesters took to the streets but there was no violence, a witness said. ‘Long live Benazir ... killer Musharraf, killer,’ they shouted.
   Meanwhile, an al-Qaeda leader based in Afghanistan has claimed responsibility for the assassination of former Pakistan premier Benazir Bhutto, whom he described as “the most precious American asset.”
   ‘We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat the mujahadeen’,’ al-Qaeda commander and spokesman Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told the Italian news agency Adnkronos International in a phone call from an unknown location.
   Al-Yazid was described by AKI as the ‘main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan’. It reported that the decision to kill Benazir was made by al-Qaeda No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October.
   The report said death squads were allegedly constituted for the mission and one cell comprising a “Punjabi volunteer” of the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi killed Benazir.
   Benazir died after being shot by a suicide attacker, who later blew himself up near her armoured vehicles just after she had addressed an election rally at Rawalpindi near here. The blast killed nearly 30 people.
   During her campaign to drum up support for her Pakistan People’s Party, Benazir had repeatedly attacked elements who were fomenting extremism and militancy in north-western region of the country and vowed to crack down on militant groups.
   Benazir, who returned to Pakistan from exile two months ago, had earlier survived a suicide attack on her homecoming procession in Karachi on October 18 that killed 140 people and injured hundreds more.
   Baitullah Mehsud, a militant leader who was recently made head of Tekrik Taliban-e-Pakistan – a coalition of Pakistani Taliban groups, had reportedly issued threats that he would send suicide bombers to target Benazir.

Pakistan’s assassinated former premier Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest in her family’s ancestral grave Friday amid the wails and tears of hundreds of thousands of mourners.
   Benazir’s husband Asif Zardari wept as her coffin was lowered into the tomb at the white, three-domed mausoleum deep in Pakistan’s rural south.
   Her son Bilawal appeared in a state of shock as a mullah led the throng in prayers and chants of ‘Allahu Akhbar’ (God is Greater).
   Those outside beat their chest in grief, while many shouted slogans blaming the president, Pervez Musharraf, over her death in a suicide attack Thursday as she left a campaign rally in the northern city of Rawalpindi.
   A huge roar had greeted her coffin, wrapped in the black, green and red of her Pakistan People’s Party, as it was driven toward the Bhutto mausoleum in a white vehicle.
   It took more than two hours to crawl the five kilometres from her family’s home in Naudero to the private mausoleum in the village of Ghari Khuda Baksh where Benazir’s father and two brothers are also buried.
   ‘We will take revenge for her death, we believe Musharraf was responsible,’ said one mourner, Mohabbat Ali. ‘It was tyrannical to kill her,’ railed another, Ghulam Nabi, adding, ‘She was innocent, she was the nation’s leader and admired all over the world.’
   As authorities struggled to keep a lid on the violence that erupted across the country, the government pointed a finger at al-Qaeda for her slaying. The scale of the unrest has effectively paralysed this nuclear-armed Muslim nation, triggering alarm bells around the world and throwing scheduled January 8 elections into disarray.
   Interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said Benazir had been on an al-Qaeda hit-list and it was likely the Islamic extremist network played a role in Thursday’s suicide attack that killed her and around 20 others.
   The two-time former premier was interred next to her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, also a prime minister, who was executed by the military in 1979 after he was ousted from power.
   Benazir, 54, was leaving a rally where she had been campaigning for the vote when a suicide bomber shot her in the neck before blowing himself up.
   The US president, George W Bush, described the killing as a ‘cowardly act’ and telephoned Musharraf – a crucial ally in the US-led ‘war on terror’ against Islamic extremism – to urge Pakistan to stay on the path of democracy.
   The assassination also thrust US security concerns back into the spotlight on the political front, less than a week before first voting in the Democratic and Republican nominating contests.

Friends used to call her ‘Princess Ann of Pakistan’ during her days at Oxford University. But the ‘daughter of the east’, as Benazir Bhutto called herself, always had a carefully-cultivated casual look.
   The good-looking, western-educated and sophisticated daughter of the charismatic former Pakistan prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, always had a special interest in the well-being of Bangladeshi people and was respectful to the dignity and sentiment of the Bangladeshis, recalled Abul Hasan Chowdhury, her classmate at Oxford and former state minister for foreign affairs.
   On a trek down the memory lane he recalled a day in Oxford in the 1970s. ‘One day I saw Benazir riding a bicycle in T-shirt and casual jeans.’
   ‘We, friends, used to called her Princess Ann of Pakistan, but she always looked casual and simple having no pretensions. She was really serious in learning but very polite in her approach and jovial in character,’ he said.
   When he heard the news of Benazir’s assassination, Hasan said, he could not believe that assassin’s bullets had cut short the life of such a warm, charismatic and cheerful woman. Hasan got introduced with Benazir, subsequently prime minister of Pakistan twice, at the Oxford Union debate in October 1973, a time when her father was ruling Pakistan and Islamabad was yet to recognise Bangladesh’s independence achieved through a bloody war in 1971.
   ‘She invited me to a lunch which I politely declined due to my preoccupation. Catching on to the sentiment of a Bangalee [Bangladeshi], she asked whether she could attend a lunch to be hosted by me. I smiled and accepted her invitation then,’ Hasan told New Age on Friday.
   Recalling their opposition to an Oxford University decision to confer honorary PhD on ZA Bhutto, Hasan said, ‘Bangladeshi students, including me, M A Rouf and Abdul Matlub Ahmed, were arguing against it as Pakistan did not recognise Bangladesh until then.’
   ‘Benazir was sitting calm in front of me while I was giving my argument against the decision. Finally, in the face of protest from the Bangladeshi students, the Oxford University Senate changed the decision,’ he said adding that the whole event, especially their stance against her father, did not change the mood of Benazir, ‘nor did it affect our friendship’.
   He went on to say that time and again, the Bangladeshi friends teased her but she was ‘very defensive’ on the issue of Bangladesh.
   On one occasion, when Hasan was the state minister in Sheikh Hasina’s cabinet, Benazir casually said, ‘Kaisar [nickname of Hasan], will you join us in our hotel suit?’ ‘I said I am with the prime minister,’ Hasan said adding that then Benazir herself went to Hasina’s room.
   The former state minister said that he was accompanying Sheikh Hasina along with Sheikh Rehana at the Oxford and Cambridge Club sometime in early ‘80s when Benazir met Hasina for the first time.
   ‘Their personal tragedies brought the two leaders closer,’ he said.
   Hasan said that in Benazir’s death South Asia had lost a very popular, charismatic and cheerful leader and that it was a serious setback for the stability of the region.
   ‘With her tragic death a new crisis will emerge in the leadership of democratic world,’ Hasan concluded.

Benazir Bhutto only entered politics after her father had been executed by the military. On Thursday she was assassinated, a depressingly predictable end for a member of one of South Asia’s seemingly cursed political dynasties.
   Powerful families from the Bhuttos of Pakistan to the Gandhis of India and the Bandaranaike family of Sri Lanka have dominated politics in this diverse and polyglot region since independence from Britain.
   But none have escaped tragedy at the hands of rebels, extremists or ambitious military leaders.
   It was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who founded Pakistan’s troubled dynasty. He became the country’s first popularly elected prime minister but was toppled by the army in 1977 and later hanged.
   Both his sons died in mysterious circumstances.
   His daughter Benazir, a former prime minister, was lucky to survive when a suicide attack on her motorcade killed nearly 150 people as she returned to Pakistan in October after eight years in exile.
   Later that month she paid an emotional return to her father’s grave in their ancestral village in southern Pakistan.
   ‘There is still danger of attack, but Allah can protect everyone and I am not scared,’ she said.
   In Bangladesh, which split from Pakistan in 1971, the country’s two leading politicians had similarly violent starts to their political careers.
   Sheikh Hasina entered politics after her father, independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was killed in a military coup in 1975.
   The man who came to power after that coup, Lieutenant General Ziaur Rahman, was killed in an abortive military mutiny in 1981. His wife Khaleda Zia was not daunted, giving up life as a housewife to join politics.
   She became the country’s first female prime minister in 1991, before Sheikh Hasina took over the top job in 1996. Today, both have been detained by a military-backed government and face prosecution for corruption.
   In India, the prime minister, Indira Gandhi, was shot by her Sikh bodyguards as she walked in her garden in 1984, cradled by her Italian daughter-in-law Sonia as she lay dying.
   The tragedy propelled her son and Sonia’s husband Rajiv into politics and into her shoes as head of government.
   He in turn was blown up by a female suicide bomber in 1991 at an election rally.
   With grim prescience, Sonia wrote she had ‘fought like a tigress’ to prevent Rajiv from entering politics.
   After he had died, she desperately wanted to stay out of politics, only to yield in 1998 after enormous pressure from the Congress party. Today she is India’s most powerful politician.
   ‘That’s part of political lives, and my mother-in-law and my husband lived and died for the country,’ she said in an interview in 2004. ‘I don’t believe they wished to die in any other way.’
   This crowded region has faced an array of violent uprisings by groups who felt excluded by democracy. The military has often felt it could do a better job of ruling than politicians.
   That has helped to make politics a risky career path.
   In Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, prime minister Solomon Bandaranaike was killed by a Buddhist monk in 1959.
   His wife, Sirimavo, succeeded him to become the world’s first female prime minister.
   His daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, also became prime minister and then president, only to lose sight in the right eye after an assassination attempt by suspected Tamil Tiger rebels in 1999.
   Mohandas K Gandhi, also known as the Mahatma or Great Soul, was assassinated in 1948. Pakistan’s first prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan was shot and killed in 1951 in Rawalpindi, the same city in which Benazir Bhutto died on Thursday.
   In a family interview with India’s Outlook magazine in Dubai in 2006, Benazir said she hoped her three children would choose a different career path.

The Rapid Action Battalion after a week’s search on Friday retrieved the broken pieces of two statuettes of Lord Vishnu that went missing from Zia International Airport on December 22 before their shipment to Paris for an exhibition.
   National Museum experts have authenticated the pieces to be parts of the lost statuettes.
   The pieces were found in the dump at Baliapur on the Aminbazar outskirts of the capital city.
   The acting museum keeper, Swapan Kumar Biswas, visited the place and told reporters that the pieces were parts of the statuettes that went missing from the airport early December 22.
   The battalion officials claimed they had retrieved parts of head, body, foot and fingers of the statuettes.
   Conservation chemist Shafiqul Alam was called to the placed and he examined the pieces.
   Shafiqul told newsmen that they had examined the pieces and were certain that the pieces were of the stolen statuettes.
   The RAB 1 commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Saqlayen, said they had completed the search at the dump at about 5:00pm and had found 27 pieces of the statuettes by then ‘The museum expert authenticated that 20 pieces were of the lost black statuettes of Lord Vishnu and the remaining seven were of the white statuette,’ he said.
   ‘We have also retrieved some other broken pieces, but the experts did not authenticate them to be of the missing statuettes.’
   ‘We have completed the search on our part,’ he said.
   Sixty battalion personnel, along with more than 70 city corporation cleaners, took part in the search that began Thursday afternoon.
   The search was launched after the arrest of nine persons at different places in Dhaka. They reportedly admitted that they had broken the statuettes into pieces and dumped them into a dustbin on Road 13 of Sector 3 at Uttara. Seven of the arrested made statements in the chief metropolitan magistrate’s court Thursday evening.
   The lawmen had so far arrested 24 people for their alleged link to the disappearance of the museum pieces and 14 of them were being interrogated by the members of the task force for interrogation.
   The governments of Bangladesh and France earlier signed an agreement send the artefacts to Paris for an exhibition titled ‘Masterpieces from Ganges delta: Collections of the Bangladesh museums’ in the Guimet Museum. The examination has been cancelled.
   Bangladesh sent 42 items in the first shipment to Paris on December 1. The government decided not to send the second consignment after the theft of the two statuettes from the airport.
   The theft was spotted on December 22 after the second consignment of the artefacts was handed over to the Air France authorities for shipment to Paris.

The Power Division has requested the government to provide about Tk 100 crore for four power agencies for the long-term rehabilitation and modernisation of transmission and distribution systems damaged by cyclone Sidr that struck Bangladesh on November 15.
   The division in the past week forwarded to the Planning Commission the project proposals of the Rural Electrification Board, West Zone Power Distribution Company, Dhaka Electric Supply Authority and Power Development for the rehabilitation and modernisation of the damaged transmission and distribution, sources in the division said.
   ‘We forwarded the project proposals of the four agencies seeking government fund of around Tk 100 crore. The projects, to be implemented between January 2008 and June 2009, focus on the rehabilitation and repair of the damaged systems, and pre-cautionary measures so that such damage could be minimised in future during natural disasters,’ a high Power Division official told New Age on Thursday.
   Among the agencies, the Rural Electrification Board and the West Zone Power Distribution Company suffered heavy losses in the cyclone as the agencies supply power to the southern and south-western districts such as Bagerhat, Barguna, Barisal, Jhalkathi, Pirojpur and Bhola, which were ravaged by the cyclone.
   In the REB proposal, the board sought Tk 51.9 crore for repairs and replacement of broken and unaligned transmission poles, ruptured distribution wires and damaged transformers, meters and towers.
   According to the REB estimate, the number of broken poles is 7,264, unaligned poles 33,890, ruptured distribution lines (spans) 29,095, damaged meters around 35,000 and damaged transformers 468.
   The west zone company sought Tk 36.09 crore for repairs or replacement of the damaged systems and the Dhaka Electric Supply Authority sought Tk 14.38 crore.
   Although sources could not immediately confirm the amount of fund sought for the Power Development Board, they said the amount was few crore less than what DESA sought.
   Sources said the agencies sought more fund than the actual damage of transmission and distribution systems to modernise some existing systems.
   ‘Before Sidr, the agencies were asked to prepare comprehensive proposals to improve the transmission and distribution to match the expected increase in power generation in 2008. The agencies have included some modernisation tasks in the proposals for the rehabilitation of the systems. They will exclude the tasks from their improvement proposals,’ said a source.
   Sources said the Planning Commission would soon discuss the proposals of the agencies.
   The government has allocated Tk 7 crore to the Rural Electrification Board and the west zone distribution company after the Power Division sought the fund for the emergency repairs of the damaged systems.

Dhaka has only six months before US presidential election campaigns kick off to get the proposed New Partnership for Development Act-2007 passed by the US Congress for duty-free access of Bangladeshi products, especially readymade garments, to the American market.
   It was stated at a seminar on ‘The State and Status of Trade Between Bangladesh and the United States and on Pending Bills in the US Congress’ held on Friday as part of a three-day non-resident Bangladeshis’ conference at a city hotel.
   Industry leaders and trade negotiators urged the non-resident Bangladeshis (NRBs) to lobby hard with the US lawmakers to mobilise necessary support for the enactment of the bill though it contained a set of conditions on meeting compliances and also provisions discriminatory to Bangladesh in exporting garments to the US market.
   Besides strong opposition from America’s textiles lobby, the bill is reportedly facing other hurdles as majority Democratic Party and its presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton have sided with protectionist trends.
   ‘It would be very difficult to get the bill through the US Congress… But I see the chance is 50-50 and it is the best chance. There is a reasonable chance if we can mobilise enough support in six months,’ Farooq Sobhan, a former foreign secretary, said when asked if Bangladesh hoped to get the bill passed before the US presidential elections in late 2008.
   Acting president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, Abdus Salam, called upon Bangladeshis living in the US to write letters to the Congressmen for supporting the cause of Bangladesh.
   The duty on Bangladeshi garments in the US now ranges between 15 and 20 per cent or an aggregate amount of $500 million a year.
   Zillul Hai Razi, political officer at the European Commission delegation in Dhaka, questioned why Dhaka had failed in the past seven years in making any progress related to duty-free access to the US market and also urged the authorities concerned to make their arguments stronger in favour of the market access.
   Referring to the comments made by some US Congressmen earlier, Shabbir Ahmed, chair of US-Bangladesh Advisory Council, said the Bangladesh embassy in Washington had no knowledge about the passage of another trade bill in 2000 giving duty-free access facilities to Sub-Saharan and Caribbean countries.
   Shamarukh Mohiuddin of the council, presenting the keynote, pointed out that Dhaka would have to lobby with the African countries to win their sympathetic support to get the bill passed.
   Shabbir, however, mentioned that Bangladesh had enormous opportunities to export to the US pharmaceutical products only by getting certification and trained nurses by teaching them English language.
   Meanwhile in another seminar, the foreign affairs adviser, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, called upon the non-resident Bangladeshis to help improve the quality of the country’s education and invest in the information and communications technology sector.
   He stressed the need for transfer of knowledge through expatriate nationals under a framework so that the country could benefit from the expertise of its nationals living overseas.
   Jasmine Ahmed of Pfizer Inc, presenting a paper on ‘Investment Opportunity: 2nd Generation Non-Resident Bangladeshis’, said a highly skilled pool of people that had emerged because of the sacrifice of and investment by the first generation non-resident Bangladeshis could now contribute to the well-being of today’s Bangladesh.

Pakistani opposition leader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said on Thursday his party would boycott a January 8 general election because of the assassination of another opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto.
   ‘The PML (N) is boycotting the election after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto,’ Sharif told a news conference in Islamabad, referring to his party.
   ‘Free elections are not possible in the presence of Musharraf,’ he said referring to president Pervez Musharraf. ‘Musharraf is the root cause of all problems.’
   Old rivals Benazir, also a former prime minister, and Sharif had recently cooperated in their opposition to Musharraf.
   Sharif said the ‘number-one demand’ of the nation was for president Pervez Musharraf to resign as soon as possible, reports Agence France-Presse.
   ‘Mr Musharraf has to step down. This is the number-one demand of the nation today. And I can see that people want this to happen as quickly as possible without any delay,’ he told reporters.

The assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has thrown Pakistan into one of the worst crises in its 60-year history, raising the spectre of widespread civil unrest and the threat of cancelled elections.
   Analysts say president Pervez Musharraf, who stepped down as army chief of the nuclear-armed country two weeks ago under international pressure, could seize the moment to reimpose emergency rule and cancel, or at least postpone, elections scheduled for January 8.
   Even if they go ahead, the process was thrown into disarray after Nawaz Sharif, one of the main contenders, announced he would boycott the poll and called on Musharraf to resign.
   ‘It is fair to assume now that elections cannot go ahead,’ said Farzana Shaikh, an expert on Pakistan and an associate fellow at the Chatham House analysis group in London.
   ‘The electoral process has been stopped dead in its tracks. I think there is a very real possibility that Musharraf will decide that the situation has got out of control and that he needs to impose emergency rule again.’
   Shaikh said Pakistan, a key US ally in the battle against militants in Afghanistan, was entering ‘uncharted waters’, which could lead to instability in a region that has seen three wars fought between Pakistan and its nuclear neighbour India.
   ‘This is not the first crisis Pakistan has faced since its inception in 1947, but I would be inclined to say that it is the worst convergence of crises we have seen,’ Shaikh said.
   Benazir, 54, died in hospital after being targeted in a combined shooting and suicide bomb attack as she campaigned in the city of Rawalpindi among thousands of supporters.
   While Islamic hardliners, including members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, both of which operate in Pakistan, have been named as possible perpetrators of the attack, analysts said Benazir’s political opponents and those close to Musharraf’s political party could not be ruled out of suspicion.
   ‘It’s going to be very difficult to establish the truth of who was behind this,’ said MJ Gohel, the executive director of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security and intelligence think- tank in London.
   Shaikh pointed to the fact that Benazir was killed in Rawalpindi, which is a long way from the North West Frontier province where Islamic militants usually operate.
   ‘That will raise fears that there was some level of official negligence that permitted this attack to go ahead,’ she said. ‘These sorts of events are going to raise very serious concerns about whether there was some sort of official connivance.’
   Benazir’s campaign managers have complained frequently that not enough was being done at a national level to protect her.
   She narrowly escaped assassination on her return from exile in October when a bomber blew up her bus, killing 139 people.
   Gohel said that as well as the domestic repercussions of Benazir’s assassination – angry supporters clashed with security forces in the hours since her death – there were widespread international concerns as well.
   ‘The ramifications are enormous,’ he said. ‘There will now be more violence and if Musharraf imposes another state of emergency there could be further crackdowns and protests.
   ‘We are looking at a political vacuum if the elections don’t take place. The radical Islamists could really start occupying that vacuum and operating from within it.

The number of Bangladesh antiquities selected for the earlier scheduled January–March Guimet Museum exhibition titled ‘Masterpieces from the Ganges delta: Collections of the Bangladesh museums’ in Paris varied from 168 to 189 in various documents.
   The Guimet Museum curator, Vincent Lefèvre, who had worked on the initiative in Bangladesh for a few years, at a meeting at the residence of the French ambassador in Dhaka on November 18, said 188 museum pieces would be sent to Paris.
   International media and the online versions of French newspapers said, ‘a total of 188 pieces were to be lent to the museum in Paris. Only a first batch of 42 was shipped to France on December 1.’
   Bangladesh government officials earlier said 189 pieces were selected to be sent to Paris. The figure matches what is mentioned in the insurance document of the artefacts.
   After the theft of two statuettes of Lord Vishnu from Zia International Airport in Dhaka on Saturday, the government said it had taken back 143 pieces that remained packed in 13 cartons for the second shipment. Forty-two pieces were shipped to Paris on December 1 and two of the pieces have been stolen, which add up to 187.
   The expert committee, formed by the government in November to look into dispatch of the pieces, pointed out the mismatch in the number of artefacts as mentioned in various documents. ‘… the number of artefacts that could be reasonably traced and enumerated stood at 168 items and NOT 187!’ read the report submitted to the cultural affairs secretary on November 6.

Pakistan’s assassinated leader Benazir Bhutto implicated military ruler Pervez Musharraf in her death in an e-mail she sent to a friend, it has been revealed, even as the US media began an unsparing review of Washington’s support to the dictator and the country’s pervasive military, reports The Times of India.
   In the e-mail sent to her friend and lobbyist Mark Siegel shortly after the first attempt on her life on October 18, Benazir wrote that if she was harmed in Pakistan she would ‘hold Musharraf responsible.’ She asked that the e-mail be send out if she was killed.
   ‘I have been made to feel insecure by his minions,’ Benazir wrote of Musharraf, detailing security measures which she said were not granted her after her return to the volatile country.
   ‘’There is no way what is happening in terms of stopping me from taking private cars or using tinted windows or giving jammers or four police mobiles to cover all sides could happen without him.’
   As it turned out Siegel sent the e-mail to some journalists almost immediately with the request that it not be publicised, but following her assassination, the contents became public. An emotional Siegel himself appeared on CNN and National Public Radio to press the case against Musharraf.
   ‘As we prepared for the campaign ... Benazir was very concerned she was not getting the security that she had asked for,’ he said. ‘She basically asked for all that was required for someone of the standing of a former prime minister. All of that was denied to her.’
   Siegel resented the suggestion by one anchor that Benazir may have been irresponsible in the way she appeared in public. ‘Don’t blame the victim for the crime. Musharraf is responsible,’ he said, describing the police protection she got as ‘sporadic and erratic.’ Many analysts wondered how the assassin packing a gun and a suicide bomb got so close to her.
   Siegel was among Benazir’s many personal friends in Washington, some of whom knew her intimately from her college days and called her by her nickname ‘Pinky.’ The lobbyist revealed that at the time of her death they had been collaborating on a book titled Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West.
   Several respected commentators, including Boston University’s Hussain Haqqani, a former Benazir aide, supported Siegel’s charge that Pakistan’s military junta was responsible for her death.
   The allegations were countered strongly by Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, the former general Mohammed Ali Durrani, who also took to the air even as the dictator’s apologists in the administration and think-tanks rushed to defend Musharraf.
   Durrani insisted that Pakistan’s military government had provided all necessary security to the former prime minister and the allegations of the military’s negligence or complicity were part of a blame game.
   But the charges galvanised the US media into an intense scrutiny of Musharraf and his alleged mendacity in the war on terror, and all day on Thursday, the airwaves were full of stories about his duplicity alongside coverage of the assassination itself.
   CNN showed an hour-long documentary titled Pakistan: Terror Central that suggested Musharraf and his military are still in cahoots with al-Qaeda and the Taliban and have been playing a double game with the Bush administration.
   One segment showed a former Pakistani intelligence official, now in a foreign country, who, with his face masked and voice disguised, said the Pakistan’s military government military tipped off Ayman Al-Zawahiri about US plans to hit him and revealed that Islamabad is still supporting Taliban and al-Qaida.
   Leading Pakistani commentators and analysts also implicated Musharraf in terrorist activity. ‘Musharraf himself is a jihadi,’ said Amir Mir, a journalist who has been hounded by the country’s military.

Nepal lawmakers formally approved Friday an agreement to abolish the centuries-old monarchy and declare the country a republic.
   But King Gyanendra will remain on the throne for the time being as the deal between the Maoists and the government last weekend to make Nepal a republic can only be put into effect at the first meeting of a new constituent assembly.
   Polls for that assembly are due to be held by mid-April.
   ‘This is another historic moment for the country,’ said senior Maoist leader Krishna Bahadur Mahara. ‘Now we’ll focus on holding free elections and work with other parties to institutionalise the republican set-up.’
   The Maoists waged a deadly decade-long revolt to topple the monarchy that ended late last year with a landmark peace pact with mainstream political parties.
   In Friday’s vote, out of 321 parliamentarians, 270 voted for the abolition of the monarchy and three voted against. The rest were absent or abstained.
   The constitutional amendment was tabled after the government and Maoists concluded the 23-point deal ending a long-running deadlock in the peace process.
   ‘The government has given a clear roadmap to bid farewell to the institution of the monarchy,’ Kundan Aryal, editor of the Himal news magazine, said. ‘They have asked the king to give up the throne voluntarily and by peaceful means.’
   There was no comment from the palace.
   Nepal’s 61-year-old monarch has already been stripped of most of his powers, including his roles as head of state and army chief, since mass protests forced an end to a 14-month period of his authoritarian rule in April 2006.
   The amendment gives lawmakers the power to make Nepal a republic ahead of the polls if the king attempts to disrupt the elections.
   Gyanendra was vaulted to the throne by the killing of his popular brother, King Birendra, shot dead in 2001 with other royals in a drunken rampage by the then-crown prince who later turned the gun on himself.
   The king, traditionally revered as the incarnation of the Hindu god of protection, Lord Vishnu, was never able to attain the popularity of his more genial, well-loved brother, viewed as a national symbol of unity.
   The Maoists, who stormed out of the interim government in September demanding greater power-sharing, agreed to rejoin the government after striking the weekend agreement.
   The former rebels had made abolition of the 239-year-old monarchy one of their key demands.
   After months of wrangling, the ultra-leftists abandoned calls for full proportional representation, which analysts said the rebels hoped would deliver them more seats.
   The Maoists have been fearful of losing their political clout in elections as opinion surveys suggest they do not enjoy large voter popularity.
   In the planned new 601-seat assembly, 335 will be elected by proportional representation and 240 using the first-past-the-post system. The parties will nominate a total of 26 members.
   The former rebels came out of the jungle and joined with the mainstream political parties after weeks of massive pro-democracy protests forced King Gyanendra to end his 14 months of direct rule in April 2006.
   The Maoist insurgency claimed more than 13,000 lives.

Former state minister Redwan Ahmed, now leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, was arrested again Friday evening soon after his release from jail.
   The Shahbagh police arrested Redwan, former liberation war affairs state minister of the BNP-led government, at the gate of the Dhaka central jail immediately after the jail authorities released him on bail at about 5:30pm. He was kept in the custody of the Shahbagh police.
   The army-led joint forces arrested Redwan just after he came out of a meeting of the Liberal Democratic Party at a house in Gulshan on June 26.
   He was treated in Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Hospital and recently went back to jail.
   He recently obtained bail from the High Court and the jail authorities released him on Friday.

Three major heritages of Bangladesh are still leading the contest for a place among seven new wonders of nature.
   Cox’s Bazar, the world’s longest natural sandy sea beaches (120 km), was in the top position till Friday among the 158 nominated sites across the world.
   Sundarban Delta, the largest mangrove forest in the world, was trailing second and the Ganges, the 2,510km-long river flowing through India and Bangladesh, was ranking third in the voting.
   Contest among the nominated natural sites will continue till December 31, 2008.Then a new panel of experts will prepare a list of 21 candidate sites from which voters worldwide will elect the new seven wonders of nature.
   After the success of seven new wonders of the world campaign, the non-profit ‘New7 Wonders Foundation’ started the campaign for the seven wonders of nature. A total of 158 natural sites across the world have been nominated till date and voting through Internet website is continuing to select the top 21 sites for final voting.
   Anyone could vote for selecting seven top natural sites of the world on www.new7wonders.com.
   Davolja Varos, a group of earth pyramids in the Radan Mountains in the southern region of Serbia was in the 4th position till Friday and Mount Everest of Nepal was trailing 5th.

Talks to set up a stable coalition government in Thailand hit a snag on Friday after the party backing ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra rejected all conditions set by small political outfits.
   The pro-Thaksin People Power Party has been wooing small parties to launch a strong coalition since it won 233 of the 480 parliamentary seats in Sunday’s poll, just short of the absolute majority needed to govern alone.
   But the party rejected five conditions set by two small outfits – Chart Thai and Puea Pandin – for joining a PPP-led coalition government. The two parties have a combined 61 seats.
   ‘Those five conditions are irrelevant to political bargaining,’ Surapong Suebwonglee, PPP’s secretary-general, told a news conference.
   The five conditions include reverence for the Thai monarchy, no revenge against political foes and respect for Prem Tinsulanonda, a top adviser to Thailand’s revered king.
   Prem is believed to have played a prominent role in last year’s bloodless coup ousting Thaksin last year.
   PPP leader Samak Sundaravej also slammed the conditions.
   ‘I want to tell Banharn that you are insulting me (by including respect for the monarchy in the conditions). It means that I am not loyal to the monarchy,’ he told reporters, referring to the leader of Chart Thai party, Banharn Silpa-archa.
   The five conditions also include no dissolution of the Assets Examination Committee, a powerful anti-graft panel set up by the junta after the coup.
   The panel is investigating a slate of corruption claims against Thaksin, who has been living in exile abroad since the coup. But the deposed premier told reporters in Hong Kong Tuesday he planned to return to Thailand by April.

New Zealand sealed the one-day series against Bangladesh when they won the rain-drenched second match by a massive 102 runs at McLean Park here on Friday.
   The home side took an unassailable 2-0 in the three-match series. The third and final game is on December 31.
   Chasing 336 for an unlikely victory, Bangladesh had slumped to 181-6 in 43 overs when rain prevented any further play. Match referee Chris Broad declared the Black Caps the winners according to the Duckworth-Lewis Method.
   Before the premature end, however, openers Junaed Siddique (15) and Tamim Iqbal (43) gave Bangladesh a positive start adding 63 runs for the first wicket but medium-pacer Kyle Mills dismissed both batsmen.
   The game was effectively over for the Tigers when they lost skipper Mohammad Ashraful, who promoted himself at number three in the order but was the victim of a controversial umpiring decision.
   Ashraful had asked for a television replay when he was declared out after Ross Taylor took a low diving catch at extra cover off Mills. Both umpires discussed the matter before sending Ashraful on his way, though replays later confirmed he was not out.
   Aftab Ahmed looked completely subdued while making 54, the only half-century for Bangladesh. His 78-ball innings had five fours and a six coming from an Ashraful-like scoop down the fine leg.
   Earlier, Bangladesh’s bowlers also failed to make any impact on New Zealand, who opted to bat first on a flat McLean Park track. With no seam movement and turn, Jamie How (74), Peter Fulton (83) and Jacob Oram (55) each hit half-centuries to pile on the runs. New Zealand ended up on 335-5.
   How and Brandon McCullum put on 82 runs for the opening stand before the New Zealand wicketkeeper was run-out after a fine throw from Tushar Imran at deep point.
   Razzak trapped How lbw but the opener scored 74 off 77 balls with 12 fours. The left-arm spinner, who also saw the back of Fulton was later named man-of-the-match.
   New Zealand added 97 runs in the last 10 overs to take the match beyond Bangladesh. Oram blazed with 55 off 31 balls before Mashrafee bin Murtaza dismissed him off the last ball of the innings.

Bhutan tightened security on Friday and temporarily closed its borders before a historic vote next week to elect the upper house of parliament, its first tentative move towards democracy from a century of absolute monarchy.
   Monday’s vote for the 25-member National Council will set the stage for the isolated Himalayan kingdom’s national polls to elect the parliament’s lower house in February and March next year.
   Sandwiched between India and China, Bhutan has been inching towards democracy since former monarch King Jigme Singye Wangchuk decided to hand power to an elected government, before passing his crown to his 27-year-old Oxford-educated son last year.
   It also held two mock polls in April and May to familiarise people with voting and train officials for elections that will eventually pave the way for a democratic political party system.
   Of the 25 members of the National Council, five are to be chosen by the king while the remaining candidates will be elected by more than 310,000 registered voters. The candidates are meant to be eminent public figures rather than representing a political party.
   The kingdom’s election commission issued a string of directives on Friday, including a prohibition on carrying weapons and mobile phones inside voting stations.
   It urged people to put on hold an annual pilgrimage to India around this time of the year and vote in large numbers.
   ‘One should also participate in shaping the future of the country and fulfil the country’s vision for a vibrant democracy,’ said Kunzang Wangdi, Bhutan’s Chief Election Commissioner.
   ‘Let us vote and make a difference during the election because the opportunity for pilgrimage will come every year.’
   The election will see villagers in each district nominate a maximum of four suitable candidates, one among whom will then be elected to the National Council using electronic voting machines. Bhutan has 20 districts. Election officials said villagers in five districts had failed to nominate even a single candidate, and so voting there had been postponed to Jan. 29 to allow them to look for nominees.
   The election commission also ordered the border with India be closed for 36 hours on fears Nepal’s former Maoist rebels could cause trouble in support of ethnic Nepalese who fled Bhutan or were expelled in 1991 for demanding democracy and protesting against discrimination.
   About 106,000 ethnic Nepalese from Bhutan now live in impoverished condition in camps in southeastern Nepal and often try to push their way through India into Bhutan. These refugees demand that they be allowed to return to their birthplace and participate in the elections.
   ‘If the King is really sincere about introducing democracy he should take us into account,’ Thinley Penjore, a leader of Bhutan’s ethnic Nepalese, said. ‘We have not been counted.’

The vice-chancellors of five public universities are likely to be removed for their suspected involvement in the recruitment of teachers and members on the staff beyond requirement and financial irregularities, sources in the education ministry told New Age on Thursday.
   The vice-chancellors, appointed by the immediate-past BNP-led government and short-listed to be removed by the interim government, include Khandaker Mustahidur Rahman of Jahangirnagar University, Sirajul Islam Khan of Jagannath University, Abul Khair of the Noakhali University of Science and Technology, Altaf Hossain of Rajshahi University, and MM Farooque of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University in Dhaka.
   The government move has reportedly prompted the vice-chancellors of some university to lobby with the education ministry and the University Grants Commission.
   The Fakhruddin Ahmed-led interim government has so far removed the vice-chancellors of the Bangladesh Open University and the National University.
   The vice-chancellor of Maulana Bhasani University of Science and Technology resigned in February amid widespread allegations of recruiting teachers and members on the staff beyond requirement.
   ‘We have been watching the activities of some vice-chancellors and investigating the allegations levelled against them before the order for their removal is issued,’ a ministry official said.
   ‘A number of investigation committees formed earlier have submitted the reports with recommendations for the removal of the vice-chancellors,’ an official of the University Grants Commission said.
   There are 28 public universities and all of the sitting vice-chancellors were appointed by the immediate-past BNP government.

A decomposed body of Sidr victim was found in a paddy field at Khuriakhali of Sarankhola in Bagerhat Friday morning. Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh on November 15.
   The victim was identified as Rakib Hawlader, 12, son of Dulal Hawlader of the Southkhali village.
   Former Southkhali union council chairman Ismail Hossain Khalifa told New Age the body was found in the morning and the victim’s father, Dulal, identified the body from the clothes and an empty pot his father tied to his waist to keep him afloat when the tidal surges swept over the area.
   The body was reduced to skeleton, said Khalifa on Friday. Tidal surges swept him away when they were going to a cyclone shelter.
   The body of the other son of Dulal was found in another paddy field at Southkhali some days ago.
   The Sarankhola upazila nirbahi officer, Shahnawaz Talukder, confirming the news, said 683 bodies of Sidr victims were found in the upazila.

The Workers Party president, Rashed Khan Menon, on Friday said Bangladesh might heinous killings of the sort in which Benazir Bhutto was killed on Thursday if it failed to control Islamist militants
   ‘Certain quarters in our country are following the style of Pakistani politics, and they are doing rehearsals here,’ Menon said, addressing a meeting of the party’s city unit in its central office in Dhaka.
   Referring to the grenade attack on an Awami League rally in 2004, Menon said the democratic and progressive political forces should be united to safeguard democracy.
   He also urged the interim government to take steps to hold national elections in line with the announced roadmap. ‘If it fails to hold elections accordingly, the country may face severe political crisis.’
   Pakistan has been facing the crisis of killings and conspiracies from the beginning, and Benazir was the latest victim of such killings, he said.
   Chaired by the party’s city unit leader Zakir Hossain Razu, the meeting was also addressed by politburo member Nurul Hasan, and city leaders Quamrul Ahsan, Abul Hossain and Mostafa Alamgir Ratan.

Peace and stability in Bangladesh and the democratic march forward will not be affected by any spill-over effects of the violence that killed
   former Pakistan prime
   minister Benazir Bhutto on Thursday, said the foreign affairs adviser.
   The adviser, Iftekhar
   Ahmed Chowdhury, on Friday also said the institutions required for peace and stability and healthy democracy would be put in place so that there could be no room for extremism.
   ‘Bangladesh has proved that it is like an oasis [in a surrounding world replete with violence]. We are an example of peace and stability,’ he told journalists on the sidelines of a seminar, organised for the non-resident Bangladeshis at a city hotel.
   Iftekhar, however, praised the courage of Benazir Bhutto for her desperate willingness to return home and serve Pakistan. ‘She was a woman of great courage and we are really shocked at her assassination,’ he said.
   Iftekhar expressed hopes that Pakistan and its people would be able to overcome the shocks.
   Former foreign secretary Farooq Sobhan also expressed his shock at the assassination of Benazir as an eventual consequence of the rise of extremism in Pakistan.
   He said Bangladesh would need to prevent the emergence of any such forces in society at any cost to ensure peace and stability.