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London: Benazir Bhutto repeatedly ignored intelligence passed to her about possible threats before she was assassinated, the United States has said.
Officials rejected accusations that they had minimised the danger because they were encouraging a power-sharing agreement between the former Pakistan prime minister and President Pervez Musharraf.
Instead, they said they had advised Bhutto's aides on how to boost security after a suicide bomber targeted her procession on her return to Pakistan from exile in October.
Serious concern
"She knew people were trying to assassinate her," a US state department spokesman said. "We don't hold information back on possible attacks on foreign leaders and foreign countries.
"We discussed those concerns regularly both with her and officials from her party and with President Musharraf and his government," said the official. "In every instance, we always took those concerns seriously. We were very active in trying to ensure that any information we had that was relevant to her situation was passed on to her as well as those responsible for her security."
However, there was no indication that Bhutto's team had followed through on the most critical of the recommendations, which included the hiring of private guards and reducing her visibility in large crowds like the one in Rawalpindi where she was killed.
As election officials met with political leaders to discuss the timing of the vote, an aide to Bhutto said that, before she was killed, the opposition leader had been planning to give two US congressmen a dossier accusing the ruling regime of working to fix the vote.
"The elections were to be thoroughly rigged, and the 'king's party' was to benefit in the electoral process," said Senator Latif Khosa, from Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), referring to the Pakistan Muslim League-Q party, which is allied to Musharraf.
The report compiled by the PPP claimed that a "safehouse" run by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) in Islamabad was being used to coordinate the manipulation. It is a matter of record that the ISI has been used to rig previous elections.
A joint statement was issued by Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister and leader of another opposition party, along with Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's husband who is now co-chairman of her party along with Bilawal, their 19-year-old son.
Tribute
"It is up to the people of Pakistan to choose their future, and the time is now," they said in the statement.
"The January 8 elections must proceed as scheduled. This will not only be a tribute to the memory of Benazir Bhutto, but even more importantly, a reaffirmation of the cause of democracy for which she died."
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, an Oxford University undergraduate, flew from Karachi and arrived with his two sisters at the family residence in Dubai.
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