ISLAMABAD, Jan 13: Rejecting President Musharraf’s remarks that the United Nations (UN) would not be asked to probe the assassination of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairperson Benazir Bhutto, a party spokesman said on Sunday that if the regime kept on running away from the demand for a UN probe, it would risk “exposing its complicity in the assassination of Ms Bhutto.”

President Pervez Musharraf in an interview with a foreign magazine had stated that the UN would not be asked to probe the incident since no other country had been involved in the slaying of Ms Bhutto.

PPP spokesman Farhatullah Khan Babar said in a statement that President Musharraf had himself been claiming that Al Qaeda was involved in the incident and that the terrorist organisation had bases outside the country.

“If that indeed is the case, then there is all the more reason to request the UN to probe the assassination,” he said.

Mr Babar said the PPP had no faith in the probe ordered through national agencies as it could not expose the “hidden, but powerful conspirators.” Secondly, the regime had invited Scotland Yard team thereby admitting that the probe by its own agencies was “inadequate and needed” to be augmented. The terms of reference of the Scotland Yard team were limited only to investigating the cause of death and not the perpetrators or organisers of the plot.

After the October 18 attack on Ms Bhutto’s convoy in Karachi, he said, the UN had called upon all nations to assist in exposing “the perpetrators, financiers, planners and organisers” of the attack.

That resolution of the UN was also binding on Pakistan, he said. Mr Babar said the UN had expressed its willingness to assist the probe into the assassination if asked by the Pakistan government.

He said Ms Bhutto had already named “suspects” in her October 16 letter to President Musharraf whom the state agencies would be “incapable of interrogating.” He said Ms Bhutto’s letter to Mark Seigel was a dying declaration that the national agencies would not be able to take into account.

He said distinguished international figures, including some Congressmen and MPs, had also demanded the UN probe.