ISLAMABAD—Benazir Bhutto's party was to discuss a successor to the slain Pakistani opposition leader on Sunday and decide whether to contest an election due in little over a week, as controversy swirled about just how Bhutto died.
Bhutto's assassination in a suicide attack on Thursday has stoked violence and thrown into doubt the Jan. 8 election, deepening the crisis in the important U.S. ally against terrorism as it struggles to emerge from military rule.
Anger against President Pervez Musharraf burns strongly among Bhutto supporters and since her death sporadic violence has erupted, boosting fears about nuclear-armed Pakistan's stability.
The death toll from the violence has reached 47.
Streets in Karachi, site of much of the violence, were generally quiet and deserted on Sunday, Reuters witnesses said, although a disabled man was burned to death when a petrol station in the city was set on fire.
Sahid Khan, assistant manager at a downtown hotel, said he had to walk 2-˝ hours to get to work for lack of transport.
"Things are very difficult because of the blast that killed Bhutto. Elections should be delayed by say three months," he told Reuters. "All parties, leaders ... need more time to prepare."
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party has dismissed the government statement that al Qaeda killed her, saying Musharraf's embattled administration was trying to cover up its failure to protect her.
Without the charismatic Bhutto, 54, whose family dynasty's history is intertwined with Pakistan's, her party is in disarray.
Bhutto's 19-year-old son, Bilawal, is to read her will on Sunday but even if it names him as her political successor, the Oxford law student is seen as too young to immediately lead, and her husband Asif Ali Zardari would likely be the de facto chief.
Otherwise the choice of a successor most likely lies between Zardari, and her top aide, Makhdoom Amin Fahim.
Election
The party leadership, due to meet in Bhutto's home town of Naudero in southern Pakistan — also where the will is to be read in the afternoon — must decide as well whether to contest the election if it goes ahead.
Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's opposition party has said it would boycott the election and has been trying to convince Bhutto's PPP to do likewise.
So far the government has not announced any decision to call off or postpone the vote, but the Election Commission said it was planning an emergency meeting on Monday.
"They should postpone the election, as a mark of respect," Greg Turner, 50, an account manager at Siemens Pakistan, told Reuters on Sunday on his way to church.
"I think it's crucial elections are held. They are essential for democracy itself and the integrity of Pakistan. But a delay is inevitable," said Turner, among the 2 percent of Pakistanis who are Christian in the overwhelmingly Islamic nation.
Although U.S. President George W. Bush has urged Pakistanis to hold the vote, a White House spokesman said it was up to Pakistan's authorities to determine the timing.
Washington had encouraged Bhutto, relatively liberal by Pakistan's standards and an opponent of Islamic militancy. She returned home from self-imposed exile in October, hoping to become prime minister for the third time.
Her death wrecked U.S. hopes of a power-sharing deal between her and Musharraf, who took power in a military coup in 1999 but left the army last month to become a civilian president.
Bhutto's husband Zardari can ooze charm, and gained respect for enduring eight years in jail before being released without being convicted. However, political foes accuse him of corruption and some PPP loyalists blame him for tainting the Bhutto name.
Many PPP leaders are from Bhutto's land-owning feudal class, yet the party also has a big following among the poor.
"Ludricrous" Death Theory?
A close aide who prepared Bhutto's body for burial dismissed as "ludicrous" a government theory she died after hitting her head on a sunroof during the suicide attack. A party spokesman said she was shot in the head.
A Pakistani television channel broadcast on Sunday grainy still pictures of what it said appeared to be two men who attacked and killed Bhutto, one firing a pistol.
Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said the government's version was based on a medical report and other evidence collected from the scene of the attack.
"If the People's Party's leadership wants, her body can be exhumed and post-mortemed. They are most welcome," he added.
The PPP has said the government must also show hard evidence al Qaeda is to blame. The accused al Qaeda-linked militants have denied any role. A spokesman for militant leader Baitullah Mehsud said: "We don't strike women."
Other militants, however, issued threats against Bhutto when she returned in October, and her triumphal entry into Karachi was met with a suicide attack that killed at least 139 people.
Although early reports on Sunday suggested the country was relatively quiet after the previous days' violence, two suspected suicide bombers were killed in central Punjab province when the devices they carried exploded prematurely in an apparent botched attack on a former minister, police said.
Police said they believed Mohammad Ejaz-ul-Haq, a former religious affairs minister in Musharraf's government who had earlier been staying at a house 200 metres (yards) away from the site of the blast, was the intended target.
In Karachi on Sunday, hotel assistant manager Khan's main wish was for an end to the strife that has racked the country.
"Every six months there's a problem here. Most Pakistanis would like to work outside the country. There are blasts, crimes, too much!"
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