Source: The New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s election commission announced Wednesday that parliamentary elections would be postponed until Feb. 18, a delay of six weeks, after the death of the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and the riots that have damaged some election commission offices and paralyzed parts of Sindh Province.

The chief election commissioner, Qazi Muhammad Farooq, made the announcement in the capital, Islamabad. He said the commission had made the decision after consulting political parties and the chief secretaries of Pakistan’s four provinces.

Mr. Farooq said a number of election commission offices had been burnt, and ballot papers, voting lists and election screens destroyed in the protests since Ms. Bhutto’s assassination last week.

They could not be replaced before Jan. 8, the date originally scheduled for the elections, Mr. Farooq said. Security also remained unsteady and not conducive to elections, he said.

Some of the heaviest rioting has taken place in Sindh Province, where Ms. Bhutto’s hometown, Karachi, has been worst hit by the post-assassination violence.

Punjab Province and the North West Frontier Province have also suffered damage, and tensions remain high there, Mr. Farooq said.

The postponement until Feb. 18 will also not interfere with Muharram, the annual festival for Shiite Muslims that begins Jan. 10 and runs through Feb. 8. The festival is often an occasion for sectarian violence in Pakistan.

“I assure all political parties that the elections will be fair, free and transparent,” Mr. Farooq said, according to Agence France-Presse. “I appeal to them to accept this decision in the supreme national interest and participate fully.”

President Pervez Musharraf is scheduled to address the nation later Wednesday.

It remains unclear in what way the two main opposition parties will act following the announcement of the new timing of the elections. They had threatened protests against the government over the delay even before the new date was confirmed Wednesday.

“Whatever reasons they give are such lame-duck excuses, because the electoral papers and lists were burnt in the districts but they have those lists in the central office,” said Farzana Raja, a spokeswoman for the Pakistan Peoples Party, the party that Ms. Bhutto used to lead, Reuters reported. “We reject their baseless excuses. We’re ready to fight the election.”

Opposition party members and Western diplomats have said the decision to push the election into February was largely meant by the government to deprive the opposition of a huge sympathy vote after Ms. Bhutto’s death.

Opposition officials have said the delay is an attempt by Mr. Musharraf to recoup some of his plummeting popularity and let the sympathy toward his critics wear off.

Furor continues in Pakistan over the Musharraf government’s assertion that Ms. Bhutto did not die from gunfire or from shrapnel caused by a suicide bomber’s explosion, but from striking her head as she tried to duck into her car during the attack last week.

Many of her supporters blame the government for her death, some accusing it of poor security and others of outright complicity.

With skepticism growing inside and outside Pakistan about the competence and objectivity of the investigation into Ms. Bhutto’s assassination, Mr. Musharraf is expected as early as Wednesday to ask Scotland Yard to send technicians to help with the inquiry, an American official said on Tuesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation.

Senior Bush administration officials and American lawmakers from both parties have privately been urging Mr. Musharraf to allow international involvement in the inquiry to help tamp down civil unrest and to give the inquiry credibility with Ms. Bhutto’s family and supporters.

On Tuesday, an aide to Ms. Bhutto, Senator Latif Khosa, said Ms. Bhutto had been planning to give two visiting American lawmakers a 160-page report accusing the Musharraf government of taking steps to rig the Jan. 8 vote, according to The Associated Press. The meeting, with Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island, was scheduled for a few hours after she was killed.

Jane Perlez contributed reporting from Lahore, Pakistan, Eric Schmitt from Washington, and Graham Bowley from New York.

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Tags: Assassination, Benazir Bhutto, Elections, Musharraf