The 19-year-old son of assassinated Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, Bilawal, was today appointed chairman of her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) along with his father, party officials said.
"It has been decided that Bilawal will be the chairman and Mr (Asif Ali) Zardari will be co-chairman," one of the party officials said in the southern town of Naudero, where top officials of Bhutto's party were meeting.
Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardai also announced today that the PPP will take part in a January 8th general election, as she would have wanted, he said.
The party was also overwhelmingly in favour of taking part in a January 8th general election but had yet to reach a formal decision on participation in it, said the party officials, who declined to be identified.
Bhutto's assassination in a suicide attack on Thursday has stoked violence and thrown into doubt the January 8th election, deepening the crisis in the important US 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 today, Reuters witnesses said, although a disabled man was burned to death when a petrol station in the city was set on fire.
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party has dismissed the government statement that al Qaeda killed her, saying President Musharraf's embattled administration was trying to cover up its failure to protect her.
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 today 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.