Bhutto Aides Reject Government Claim

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - An Islamic militant group said Saturday it had no link to Benazir Bhutto's killing, dismissing government claims that its leader orchestrated the assassination.

Bhutto's aides also said they doubted militant commander Baitullah Mehsud was behind the attack on the opposition leader and accused the government of a cover-up.

The dispute and conflicting reports about Bhutto's exact cause of death were expected to further enflame the violence wracking this nuclear-armed nation two days after the popular former prime minister was killed in a suicide attack.

Roads across Bhutto's southern Sindh province were littered with burning vehicles as mobs of supporters continued their rampage. Factories, stores and restaurants were set ablaze in the city of Karachi, where 17 people have been killed and dozens injured, officials said.

Army, police and paramilitary troops patrolled the nearly deserted streets of Bhutto's home city of Larkana, where rioting left shops at a jewelry market smoldering.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif led a 47-member delegation of other opposition leaders to meet with Bhutto's family to express condolences, said Sadiq ul-Farooq, spokesman for Sharif's party.

President Pervez Musharraf called Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, promising to make every effort to bring the attackers to justice, state-run Pakistan Television reported.

The government blamed Bhutto's killing on al-Qaida and Taliban militants operating with increasing impunity in the lawless tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. It released a transcript Friday of a purported conversation between Mehsud and another militant, apparently discussing the assassination.

"It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her," Mehsud said, according to the transcript.

Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema described Mehsud as an al-Qaida leader who was also behind the Karachi bomb blast in October against Bhutto that killed more than 140 people.

But a spokesman for Mehsud, Maulana Mohammed Umer, denied the militant was involved in the attack and dismissed the allegations as "government propaganda."

"We strongly deny it. Baitullah Mehsud is not involved in the killing of Benazir Bhutto," he said in a telephone call he made to The Associated Press from the tribal region of South Waziristan.

"The fact is that we are only against America, and we don't consider political leaders of Pakistan our enemy," he said, adding that he was speaking on instructions from Mehsud.

Mehsud heads Tehrik-i-Taliban, a newly formed coalition of Islamic militants committed to waging holy war against the government, which is a key U.S. ally in its war on terror.

Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party accused the government of trying to frame Mehsud, saying the militant - through emissaries - had previously told Bhutto he was not involved in the Karachi bombing.

"The story that al-Qaida or Baitullah Mehsud did it appears to us to be a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert the attention," said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Bhutto's party.

After the Karachi attack, Bhutto accused elements in the ruling pro-Musharraf party of plotting to kill her. The government denied the claims. Babar said Bhutto's allegations were never investigated.

Bhutto was killed Thursday evening when a suicide attacker shot at her and then blew himself up as she left a rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi near Islamabad. The attack killed about 20 others as well. Authorities initially said she died from bullet wounds, and a surgeon who treated her said the impact from shrapnel on her skull killed her.

But Cheema said she was killed when she tried to duck back into the armored vehicle during the attack, and the shock waves from the blast smashed her head into a lever attached to the sunroof, fracturing her skull, he said.

The government said it was forming two inquiries into Bhutto's death, one to be carried out by a high court judge and another by security forces.

On Saturday, about half a dozen police investigators were still sifting through evidence and taking measurements at the scene of the attack. More than a dozen officers diverted traffic and provided security for the investigators.

Mobs continued to wreak havoc across the country for a third day. Business centers, gas stations and schools were closed and many roads were deserted.

Rioters in Karachi set fire to three factories, a restaurant, two shops and several vehicles, said Ehtisham Uddin, a local fire official. Doctors at hospitals in the city said 26 people were wounded overnight by gunshots, many of them fired by protesters.

Karachi police chief Azhar Farooqi said 17 people were killed in the city in the violence and other officials said dozens were injured. Police arrested 250 people, Farooqi said. More than two dozen people have been killed nationwide, officials said.

Desperate to quell the violence, the government sent troops into several cities. Soldiers patrolled several Karachi neighborhoods Saturday, and residents complained of shortages of food and gasoline.

Burned out vehicles littered the road from Larkana to Karachi, and hundreds of people tried to hitch rides along the route. Protesters burned tires, and markets were deserted.

Train service in parts of the south were suspended because "of the bad law and order situation," a rail official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The army positioned 20 battalions of troops for deployment across Sindh province if they were needed to stop the violence, according to a military statement.

Bhutto's death plunged the nation deep into turmoil less than two weeks before parliamentary elections. The government said it has no plans to postpone the Jan. 8 poll despite a boycott by key opposition parties.

Polish Troops Face War Crimes Charges

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Reports that Poland's troops in Afghanistan may have committed a war crime against defenseless civilians has shocked the country's public, which remains sensitive to the performance of the Polish military abroad.

In August separate Polish and U.S. patrols were reportedly struck by explosive devices. Polish reinforcements soon arrived and opened fire on a nearby village. The mortar attack on the village of Nangar Khel, close to the Afghan-Pakistani border, killed eight Afghani civilians and left three women crippled. A pregnant woman and a child were among the dead.

"We are very concerned about a possible war crime -- a lot of Poles cannot believe our soldiers could commit such a crime," said Jacek Przybylski, deputy foreign editor of the leading Polish daily Rzeczpospolita.

Polish authorities have kept the flow of information about the incident under control, leaving the media the task of digging out the truth.

Many in Poland want exemplary punishment for the soldiers, a formal apology to Afghanistan and large sums to be paid to the victims' families.

If the war crime is proven, six of the seven perpetrators, who have been held in state custody, could face life in prison. Even more officers might be accused as the investigation unfolds.

On Nov. 13 the military prosecution, citing secret evidence, ascertained that there was no exchange of fire, and that the civilians had been fired upon with the intent to kill them. The prosecutor's office filed charges against seven soldiers, who stand accused of violating international law.

The prosecution sees no mitigating circumstances in the case and maintains that no error or hardware failure can account for the way the mortars were aimed by some of Poland's supposedly best soldiers.

No Taliban members are believed to have been in the village, though initially the soldiers accused reportedly told their commanders that they had been shot at from the village. The officers involved are also accused of hindering the investigation.

Citing unnamed sources, the prestigious daily Gazeta Wyborcza reported that the evidence could include video footage of a Polish soldier entering the bombarded village. According to this report, the behavior of the Polish troops was appalling.

In statements to the press earlier, commander of the Polish military contingent in Afghanistan Gen. Mark Tomaszycki said soldiers did not enter the village and only fired from a distance.

Tomaszycki said the soldiers did not claim to have been fired upon but said there had been some contact with Taliban.

Questions have since arisen about why commanders gave the order to open fire on the civilian settlement and why these orders were followed. It remains unclear how informed the soldiers' superiors were on the details of the operation and what their level of responsibility is.

Military prosecutors apparently have not interrogated senior officers yet, though this is required by North Atlantic Treaty Organization procedures, raising suspicion that responsibilities might be concealed and the soldiers used as scapegoats.

The daily Rzeczpospolita has based such claims on information given to it by an unnamed officer serving in Afghanistan.

The daily paper reports that the defense will consider responsibility by commanders and politicians, since it believes the contingent's commanders could have coordinated a version of the story with the soldiers, promising them the case would die out.

Citing court documents, Polish radio station RMF said one soldier refused to follow his superiors' orders and left, and that later a deputy commander told the remaining soldiers that they should not be concerned about rockets hitting the village.

The defense is also raising the possibility that the killing could have been caused by a faulty mortar gun or damaged ammunition.

"We have sources in the army that say that it was only an incident, and that they thought they were attacking the Taliban, getting their information from U.S. troops," Przybylski said.

The wives of two of the soldiers accused of war crimes have said the "suggestion" to open fire came from a U.S. command.

According to the Dec. 3 edition of Rzeczpospolita, the Polish soldiers were told by the base "the village needs to be f***ed up" but said they were still aiming at the nearby hills where they supposed the Taliban members were hiding. It is believed that Taliban members often come down from the hills and hide among the civilian population in villages, especially at night.

The prosecution said there is no proof indicating U.S. responsibility, but in Poland disillusionment with the U.S. is on the rise.

Roman Kuzniar, the head of the strategic studies department at Warsaw University, said that while the Polish contingent in Afghanistan is part of NATO's peacekeeping mission, Polish troops have been made subordinate to U.S. troops, impairing the quality of the Polish mission.

"It was certain that our soldiers would soon adopt the methods of combat of their American superiors and colleagues. These methods involve ignoring completely all rights and limitations under international humanitarian law," Kuzniar wrote in the Nov. 21 edition of Warsaw Dziennik.

Recent statements by U.S. President George Bush have done little to improve Washington's image in Poland.

"Bush recently forgot to mention Polish troops when mentioning U.S. allies in Afghanistan," Przybylski said. "For Poles it is especially important to be recognized as allies of the U.S."

Both the Iraqi and the Afghani missions are unpopular among Poles. The withdrawal from Iraq has been scheduled for 2008, but there are still no plans to reduce the 1,200-strong contingent in Afghanistan. It could, however, be changed into one of a more civilian nature.

A poll conducted shortly after the prosecution announced its findings shows that the Afghani mission has almost equaled the Iraqi mission in unpopularity, with 85 percent of Poles opposing both missions.

Poles also overwhelmingly supported an official apology to the Afghanistan government. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has made that conditional on the investigation's conclusions.

The villagers have been given medical assistance, food and money, but some say the compensation is insufficient and could be interpreted as an attempt to buy their silence.

"One might get the impression that an attempt was made to cram these people's mouths shut with rice and rolls of banknotes," the Warsaw Dziennik wrote on Nov. 15. "Real compensation should be paid out to the families of those killed and injured, rather than our resting satisfied by tossing scrap to them."