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New York, US: Pakistan's chief diplomat, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, on Saturday questioned the guilt of a key Taliban suspect accused by the CIA and the previous Musharraf government of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, suggesting a wider conspiracy was behind her death.
On Thursday the United Nations agreed to help in setting up an independent commission to investigate those whom the Pakistani foreign minister called "the conspirers, the financiers, the perpetrators, that led to motivating this assassination, and bring them to justice."
Wide range of theories
The assassination last December of the popular former prime minister and leader of the Pakistan People's Party stunned Pakistan and the world, and quickly set off a wide range of conspiracy theories, including the idea that Pakistan's powerful internal security agencies were involved and that Musharraf was culpable, or at least failed to prevent her slaying.
"Why a person, who had come with a message of reconciliation, why was she eliminated? Who were the forces behind it? What objectives did they have? Why were they considering Benazir Bhutto a threat to them?" asked Qureshi.
He declined to endorse accusations by President Pervez Musharraf's government and the CIA that Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistani militant commander often blamed for suicide attacks, had orchestrated Bhutto's December 27 killing at a campaign rally before parliamentary elections.
Mehsud is one of a number of warlords in Pakistan's lawless northwest.
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