Big blow

Karachi, July 22 (Reuters): Gunmen killed a senior security officer for Asif Ali Zardari, head of Pakistan’s ruling party, in the southern city of Karachi today, police and party officials said.

Zardari is the widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a suicide gun and bomb attack in the city of Rawalpindi on December 27 while campaigning for an election that her party, the Pakistan people’s Party (PPP), subsequently won.

Ejaz Durrani, a spokesman for Zardari in Karachi, said the assailants ambushed the security officer, Khalid Shehanshah, outside his house in Karachi’s upmarket Defence neighbourhood.

Zardari, who was in Islamabad when the attack took place, condemned the killing.

“The attackers got out of a white car and opened fire as Shehanshah was standing outside his house,” provincial interior minister Zulfiqar Mirza told reporters.

Shehanshah was a member of Bhutto’s security escort on the day she was killed.

Mirza declined to speculate who could have been behind the Shehanshah’s killing, but said it was aimed at destabilising the three-and-a-half-month old coalition led by Zardari’s party.

“First there were bomb blasts in the city and now they have killed someone who was very close to our party,” he said, alluding to a series of small blasts in Karachi earlier this month.Zardari returned to Pakistan at the weekend after a long stay with his daughters in Dubai.

Sharif to stay away

Former Pakistan Premier and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif has decided to stay away from a crucial meeting of the PPP-led coalition tomorrow that will discuss problems confronting the country and forge a strategy to counter terrorism.

Sharif’s brother, Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, will represent the PML-N at the meeting to be held in Islamabad, party sources said.

The meeting has been convened by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

Gilani last week called Sharif, who is in London, to invite him to the meeting. But PML-N sources said Sharif had extended his stay in Britain to be with his wife who recently underwent a major surgery.

The sources said Shahbaz, who is president of the PML-N, will convey the party’s views on fighting terrorism at the meeting. Shahbaz is also expected to convey the party’s intention to present the “war against terror” for a thorough debate in parliament.

Senior PML-N leaders have also stressed the need for the PPP to deliver on its commitment to reinstate judges who were deposed by President Pervez Musharraf during last year’s emergency.

Sharif’s decision to stay away from the meeting comes after media reports said that the PML-N had agreed to stay in the ruling coaltion only if the government took concrete steps to restore deposed judges and impeach Musharraf by August 15.

Addressing PML-N workers in London last week, Sharif said he intended to hold a “final” round of talks with Zardari to resolve differences between the two parties.