Delivery of a UN report on the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto has been delayed by over two weeks at the urgent request of Pakistan, the United Nations said today.
The report follows a nine-month inquiry by a three-person UN panel and was due to be presented today to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. But Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, Ms Bhutto's widower, requested a delay until April 15th, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said.
Mr Nesirky gave no reason for the Pakistani request, which he said had arrived overnight.
In Islamabad, Pakistan's information minister said his country had asked for the delay so that the panel could get input from two former heads of state, who he said had warned Bhutto there could be a threat to her life.
The two heads of state, whom he declined to name, "could be helpful to the commission in finding who was behind her assassination," the minister, Qamar Zaman Kaira, said.
The panel, headed by Chile's UN Ambassador Heraldo Munoz, looked into the circumstances surrounding the attack that killed Bhutto after an election campaign rally in Rawalpindi city on December 27th, 2007.
"The Secretary-General has accepted an urgent request by the President of Pakistan to delay the presentation of the report ... until 15 April 2010," Mr Nesirky told reporters.
But he said the panel had told Mr Ban "that, as of today, all relevant facts and circumstances have been explored, and the report is now complete and ready to be delivered."
Reuters