Benazir Bhutto

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The CIA believes extremists associated with a Pakistani tribal leader are responsible for the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, according to a U.S. intelligence official.

The official, who spoke under condition of anonymity, said the agency concluded that Baitullah Mehsud — the leader of the Pakistani Taliban who has ties to al Qaeda — was behind the attack.

The Pakistani government was quick to blame Mehsud’s organization for Bhutto’s death in December, producing an intercepted audio communication in which Mehsud confirmed his men were responsible for the attack.

The U.S. intelligence community was first cautious about drawing the same conclusion as the Pakistanis.

But after reviewing various other intelligence, the CIA agreed Mehsud played a role in Bhutto’s killing, the U.S. official said.

The CIA viewpoint was first made known in a Washington Post interview with CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden published Friday.

“This was done by that network around Baitullah Mehsud. We have no reason to question that,” Hayden told the newspaper.

Mehsud operates out of the tribal areas of northwestern Pakistan. Pakistani officials have blamed Mehsud’s forces for a number of attacks directed against the government, including one this week in which Islamic militants overran a military outpost in South Waziristan.

U.S. officials and terrorism experts are increasingly worried about the stability of Pakistan.

The Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda have drawn closer ideologically over the past couple of years and see themselves at war with the Pakistani state, CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen said at a conference at a Washington think tank Wednesday.

He pointed to the growing number of attacks against Pakistani government officials and the ISI, the country’s intelligence service.

Also at the New America Foundation conference, the organization’s president, Steve Coll, indicated al Qaeda and the local insurgency are gathering strength as the government of President Pervez Musharraf is weakening.

Hayden praised Musharraf’s cooperation in the war on terror, but also said the militants in Pakistan are a “serious base of danger to the current well-being of Pakistan.”

A U.S. intelligence official said the stepped-up campaign by the extremists creates a “challenging environment” for the Pakistanis, but indicated the Musharraf government is “increasingly cognizant” of the problem it faces. (CNN)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) — Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has said assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto ignored government warnings — and defended himself against accusations that he had a role in her slaying.

He also admitted Thursday he is not satisfied with the investigation into her death, making his comments to reporters in a rare news conference held in English.

The first question to the Pakistani leader after his 20-minute address dealt with the myriad of conspiracy theories that blame Musharraf’s government for helping orchestrate last week’s assassination of Bhutto, who led the opposition’s push for Musharraf to abandon his role as Pakistan’s military leader.

“Frankly, I consider the question below my dignity to answer, but however I would like to answer it,” Musharraf told the reporter from Britain’s Sky News.

“I’m not a feudal and I’m not a tribal — I have been brought up in a very educated and civilized family which believes in values, which believes in principles, which believes in character.

“My family, by any imagination, is not a family which believes in killing people, assassinating, intriguing. And that is all there I want to say.”

Later, he accused Bhutto of “ignoring” warnings from the government and detailed the security provided to the former prime minister in Liaquat Bagh, the Rawalpindi park where she was killed last week.

“She was informed of the threat to her, the first time about three to four weeks back when she wanted to the same place,” Musharraf said. “The intelligence agencies knew there was a threat and we told her not to go. …

“So therefore she went on her own volition, ignoring the threat.”

The park, often a place for political gatherings, is named after Pakistan’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was assassinated in 1951.

More than 1,000 police were patrolling the park where Bhutto’s convoy passed last Thursday, and government snipers patrolled each building’s rooftop, Musharraf said. Bhutto was traveling in a bulletproof vehicle, and had handpicked the head of her security detail, he said.

Musharraf pointed out that no one else in the vehicle was injured when gunshots rang out, followed by suicide blast that killed nearly two dozen people in the crowd.

“Nobody gets hurt (inside the car), only she when she … decides to rise above the sunroof,” he said.

He asked reporters to consider what he would have to gain from any role in assassination.

“Anyone who wants to assassinate or do anything of this kind must weigh pros and cons,” he said ” Would I … be the maximum gainer or is there somebody else here who could gain more? So this is another element that I leave to your judgment.”

He expressed his dissatisfaction with the way investigators immediately cleaned the area where Bhutto was killed, possibly wiping away key forensic evidence.

“It’s unnecessary. It shouldn’t have been done,” Musharraf said. “But if you are meaning that they did it by design to hide evidence — no.

“It is just inefficiency … on the part of these people who think that things have to be cleared and the road has to be cleared and traffic has to go through.

“But certainly I’m sure that they didn’t do it with an intention of hiding some secrets or that the intelligence agencies … had instructed them to hide this. No, I don’t believe that.” (CNN)