ISLAMABAD, Jan 27: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is likely to announce, during his visit to Islamabad on Feb 4, a commission to investigate the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

“Secretary-General Ban will announce the commission during his visit,” diplomatic sources said.

A few weeks ago the UN had proposed to Pakistan the terms of reference for an independent commission to probe into the circumstances of the assassination and Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Sadiq had said that the UN was in an advanced stage of instituting the inquiry.

Pakistan had called upon the United Nations in June last year to constitute a commission to expose through independent and impartial investigations the culprits, perpetrators, financiers and the mastermind behind the assassination of Ms Bhutto in a gun and bomb attack in Rawalpindi on Dec 27, 2007.

The government said that it was seeking an international probe because it suspected an ‘international conspiracy’ and believed that such an investigation was beyond the capacity of local investigators.

Among issues discussed during deliberations about the probe, the trickier ones were the financing of the inquiry, access of investigators to relevant information and full cooperation of government agencies.

President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani held a meeting earlier this month to discuss the terms of reference proposed by the UN.

The meeting expressed satisfaction at the progress and the support received at the UN for setting up the commission.

Before coming into power, the Pakistan People’s Party had written a letter to the UN secretary-general and permanent members of the Security Council, seeking establishment of an independent international commission.

The party had based its demand on its lack of trust in the investigation process in the country and the incumbent government’s commitment to reaching a ‘satisfactory and credible’ conclusion.

However, the UN had said that such a request should come through the ‘executive branch’ of the government.

The former government had opposed an international investigation led by the UN.