UNITED NATIONS The son of slain Pakistani former prime minister Benazir Bhutto defended his mother`s human rights record Wednesday after accepting a UN prize in her honor, AP reports.

Pakistan Peoples Party Co-Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari accepted the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights reading a quotation from her autobiography that his mother had written before her Dec. 2007 assassination, saying she realized returning to her homeland could cost her life but did so because `democracy in Pakistan is not just important for Pakistanis it is important for the entire world.`

But at a press conference following the ceremony, Zardari also had to defend his mother`s human rights record during her two terms as prime minister from 1998-1990 and from 1993-1996, during which time Amnesty International documented hundreds of extra-judicial killings by government forces and the jailings of human right defenders, including journalists.

`My mother did everything humanly possible to ensure both democracy and human rights in Pakistan, her governments were undermined by rogue elements within the establishment at the time,` Zardari said. `It was not her who committed any of these crimes and she did everything she could to stop anything of this sort happening.`

Bilawal, whose father Asif Zardari is now Pakistan`s president, acknowledged that many challenges remain in the area of human rights and that they will not likely get the attention they deserve in the face of problems with terrorism and the global economy.

And he urged Pakistani youth to reject extremist interpretations of Islam, which he defended as a religion of peace.

He also defended his decision to assume, together with his father, the helm of Bhutto`s Pakistan Peoples Party after his mother`s death, saying it had to be looked at in the context of what happened after she was killed.

`Had we not been able to calm the situation as much as possible, our country would not exist today,` Bilawal said.

The UN prize is awarded every five years on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, now 60 years old.

Other winners this year included former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark; slain US nun and Amazon rain forest defender Dorothy Stang; the group Human Rights Watch; Dr. Carolyn Gomes, co-founder of Jamaicans for Justice; Dr. Denis Mukwege, who founded a hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo to treat victims of sexual violence; and Canadian human rights lawyer Louise Arbour.

Past winners have included Dr. Martin Luther King, Jimmy Carter, Amnesty International and Nelson Mandela.