FORMER PAKISTANI prime minister Benazir Bhutto was posthumously awarded the 2007 Tipperary International Peace Award in Co Tipperary yesterday.
Ms Bhutto was assassinated at an election rally in Pakistan on December 27th, 2007.
The award was accepted by Basher Riaz, her former press representative in the UK, where she once lived in exile.
"She was a wonderful human being and the world has lost not only a great woman but a kind-hearted gentle and loving soul," Mr Riaz said, adding he remained unsatisfied with explanations for her death, officially blamed on extremists. Had she lived and been elected, she would have worked for peace way beyond the Pakistan border in the Middle East, he said.
He recalled bringing her son to London when he was three because Ms Bhutto was under threat in Pakistan. Bilwal Bhutto Zidari is now 19 and joint leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).
Pakistan's new prime minister and PPP member, Yousaf Raza Gillani, sent a message of thanks for the award, saying the placement of Benazir Bhutto among great leaders and previous recipients of the prize, like former South African president Nelson Mandela, was a source of inspiration to peace-loving people worldwide.
"The former prime minister worked tirelessly to bring stability . . . to her country and paid the ultimate price in pursuit of equality," said Martin Quinn, secretary of the Tipperary Peace Convention, who presented the award.
There were many personal tributes from those who worked closely with Ms Bhutto.
Hasan Bukhari, president of the PPP UK, said it was a sad occasion as Ms Bhutto should have been there herself.
Mr Bukhari was one of some 15 delegates from the PPP present for the awards.
The former Pakistani high commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, said the world had lost one of the most rare voices of sanity and wisdom.
He described meeting Ms Bhutto a few days before her final journey to Pakistan. "I don't know what is in store for me . . . if I die, I will die for a cause," he recalled her saying.
He said Ms Bhutto was very fond of Ireland, which she visited in June 1994 as one of her first foreign visits when elected as prime minister for the second time.
Mr Quinn, said the two most powerful influences in Ms Bhutto's life were her father and her teacher at a convent school in Pakistan - an Irish nun called Mother Eugene.
