ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — President Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday met for the first time with Scotland Yard investigators looking into the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and declared afterward that his government was committed to bringing her killers to justice.
The Pakistani president, who had initially described the British team’s role as limited to forensic and technical assistance, appeared ready to grant them a wider scope of inquiry.
Almost from the time of Bhutto’s death Dec. 27 in an attack by a gunman and a suicide bomber, there has been angry debate over whether the government was trying to cover up aspects of the case.
Musharraf has defended the handling of the probe and has also said that Bhutto bore sole responsibility for her decision to stand up in her SUV and put her head and shoulders above the sunroof to wave to supporters in the city of Rawalpindi.
In London, Bhutto’s 19-year- old son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, told reporters that the United Nations should conduct an investigation into the killing.
“We do not believe that an investigation under the authority of the Pakistani government has the necessary transparency,” said Zardari, who was named ceremonial head of his mother’s Pakistan People’s Party.
Definitive conclusions will be difficult to draw because of a lack of physical evidence. The assassination scene was hosed down within about an hour of the blast, and no autopsy was conducted.
