Islamabad: A senior US official in Washington has said that there was some debate within the Bush Administration over whether to press President Pervez Musharraf to open the investigation to law enforcement officials from outside Pakistan, including the FBI.
As pressure grew for an independent inquiry, the Pakistan Government said that two high-level investigations were being conducted — one led by a senior High Court judge and the other by high-level police and intelligence officials, the New York Times reported.
The government identified militant leader Baitullah Mehsud as the chief suspect behind the attack.
"We have an intercept from this morning in which he congratulated his people for carrying out this act," Interior Ministry spokesman, Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, said.
"We have irrefutable evidence that al-Qaeda and its networks are trying to destabilise the government," he added.
"They have been systematically attacking our government, and now a political icon." Bhutto, he said, was on the hit list of al-Qaeda and other terrorists.
However, many of Bhutto's supporters openly blamed the Musharraf regime for her death, where as the Interior Ministry surprised everyone by saying that Bhutto had died not from gunshots or shrapnel, but from a skull fracture.
The death of Bhutto has left Pakistan's politics teetering on a knife's edge, and the prospect of elections uncertain, the NYT said.
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