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Islamabad: Pakistan on Saturday said that it has asked the United Nations to investigate the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq said Pakistan's ambassador to the UN handed the request to the world body's secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, in New York on Friday.
It was unclear when Ban would make a decision and whether he would refer the matter to the UN Security Council.
Bhutto died in a gun-and-suicide bomb attack on December 27 as she left an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi.
Her death shocked the world and Pakistan, fanning revulsion at rising militant violence as well as conspiracy theories that Pakistan's powerful spy agencies were involved.
PPP push
It also helped carry her Pakistan Peoples Party to victory in February elections. The party leads a seven-week-old coalition government that has made a UN probe into who was behind the killing a top priority.
The previous government and the CIA quickly accused Baitullah Mahsud, a Pakistani militant commander often blamed for suicide attacks, of orchestrating the killing.
Pakistan's Interior Ministry released a wiretap in which Mahsud associates purportedly congratulated each other for her death. Bhutto had called for Pakistan to redouble its efforts against Islamist extremism.
President Pervez Musharraf and the United States have opposed a UN investigation.
But Bhutto's party argues that the world body should probe the killing given Mahsud's alleged links to Al Qaida.
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