ISLAMABAD, Jan 30 Political rivals in the Senate put their bitter differences aside for a while on Wednesday to grieve and condemn `in the strongest terms` Benazir Bhutto`s assassination, which a joint resolution said meant an `irreparable loss` to the country.

The condolence resolution, passed unanimously, was the only business conducted on the opening day of an opposition-called session of the upper house, which is due to hold a formal reference in memory of the former prime minister and Pakistan People`s Party (PPP) leader on Thursday morning to be followed by debates on some burning issues ranging from Pakistan`s worst food shortages to a violence-plagued law and order, and the aftermath of a controversial emergency that shook the country three months ago.

Those debates, so close to the February 18 general elections, will potentially be embarrassing for the 2-1/2-month-old interim government, which has to explain both its own and its predecessors` role in the country`s most serious turmoil in more than eight years of President Pervez Musharraf`s rule.

Opposition leader Mian Raza Rabbani of the PPP and Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal`s (MMA) senior figure Prof Khurshid Ahmed later told journalists that the government side had agreed to discussing the whole of opposition-proposed six-point agenda, even though different points could be clubbed together.

But they were unsure how long the session would last while many senators are likely to be in a hurry to join their parties` campaigns for elections, which Prof Khurshid`s Jamaat-i-Islami is boycotting along with some smaller groups in the All Parties Democratic Movement.

The MMA leader also told a questioner that the opposition parties would discuss their stance about the position of interim Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro`s cabinet at the end of its presumed constitutional life of 90 days, only four days before the February 18 vote it is supposed to supervise.

Senate acting chairman Mir Jan Mohammad Jamali said at the start of the session that, as agreed in a joint business advisory committee, the opening day would take up only the condolence resolution, which voiced the house`s “profound grief, shock and anger over the brutal assassination” of Ms Bhutto in a bomb-and-suicide bomb attack outside Rawalpindi`s Liaquat Bagh park on December 27 immediately after she addressed a campaign rally there.

It paid tribute to her as “a distinguished politician and a seasoned parliamentarian” who, it noted, had twice each been prime minister and opposition leader of the National Assembly and had the unique honour of becoming the first woman prime minister of a Muslim country in 1988.

“Her services rendered for the cause of democracy would long be remembered,” it said. “She was a political leader recognised nationally and internationally. Throughout her life, she rendered valuable services for the promotion of democracy in the country. The country has suffered an irreparable loss due to her tragic demise.”

The resolution praised Ms Bhutto as a “strong believer and defender of the federation of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan” and said “She struggled relentlessly for the economic emancipation of the working classes, women and minorities.”It conveyed the senators` condolences by name to Ms Bhutto`s three children -- son Bilawal and daughters Bakhtawar and Asifa --, husband Asif Ali Zardari, mother Nusrat Bhutto and sister Sanam Bhutto for whom, it said, “no words can provide any solace or comfort”.

Answering a journalist`s question, Prof Khurshid said the opposition had proposed expression of condolences also to PPP workers and people of Pakistan in general but owing to a `lapse`, those words were not incorporated in the draft, which was read out by Senator Wasim Sajjad who, as a tradition, continued as leader of the house although his Pakistan Muslim League was no longer the ruling party after its cabinet ceased to exist at the expiration of its five-year term on November 15. “But it was not deliberate,” Mr Rabbani said about the omission.

MMA parliamentary group leader Maulana Gul Naseeb led the Fateha prayer for Ms Bhutto before the house was adjourned until 10am on Thursday.