UN Bhutto probe charges cover-up by Musharraf govt.

Who killed Benazir Bhutto, the popular Pakistani leader and first female head of state in the Muslim world - al-Qaida or the Taliban or the country's military leadership, which has enjoyed the backing of the United States for the past several decades? There may never be a definitive answer, but a new report made public by an inquiry commission established by the U.N. last July suggests that all these entities had something to do with Bhutto's Dec. 27, 2007 assassination after leaving a campaign rally, two weeks before general elections were due. "The investigation was severely hampered by intelligence agencies and other government officials, which impeded the search for the truth," Heraldo Muñoz, chair of the Bhutto Commission of Inquiry and permanent representative of Chile to the U.N., told reporters Thursday. "These officials, in part fearing intelligence agencies' involvement, were unsure of how vigorously they ought to pursue actions which they knew, as professionals, they should have taken," he said. The commission's report, based on interviews with 250 people in and outside Pakistan as well as other evidence, says the official investigation focused on "low-level operatives and placed little or no focus on investigating those further up the hierarchy in the planning, financing and execution of the assassination".