Bhutto: Musharraf 'Responsible'

In an e-mail sent to a confidant in the US two months ago, assassinated Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto said she would hold the country's current leader Pervez Musharraf "responsible" because his government did not do enough to provide for her security.



"I wld [sic] hold Musharaf [sic] responsible," Bhutto wrote to her US spokesman, Mark Siegel, in the October e-mail, which was reported Thursday afternoon by CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "I have been made to feel insecure by his minions, and 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 cld [sic] happen without him."

Blitzer told viewers he received the e-mail soon after it was sent two months ago, but he agreed not to report on it unless Bhutto was assassinated. "It's a story I was asked to report to the world in -- if Bhutto were killed," he said.

The former Pakistani prime minister was shot twice Thursday just before her assassin detonated a suicide bomb that killed at least 20 more of her supporters.

Appearing on The Situation Room on CNN, Siegel said Bhutto was concerned about her security as soon as she returned from years-long exile in October.

"Benazir was very concerned by the lack of security that she had on her arrival in Karachi on October 18th," Siegel said. "The circumstances around the attempt on the night of the 18th, the morning of the 19th, was very, very suspicious. ... There was no investigation of that horrendous killing which killed 179 people. She had asked that Scotland Yard and the FBI be brought in for forensic help for the investigation. The government of General Musharraf absolutely refused."

Since October, Siegel said, Bhutto received "some police protection," but was denied other security precautions such as jammers to prevent improvised explosive devices or four police escorts to protect her from all sides when she appeared in public.

Mahmud al-Durrani, Pakistan's ambassador to the US, also appeared on Blitzer's program. He said it was "naive" to blame Musharraf's government for the attack.

"Musharraf tried his best, but the circumstances under which she moved, that was a problem," al-Durrani said. "When she was moving almost in a sea of humanity, so this -- this -- no system in the world can protect you against that."