Benazir's call for foreign bodyguards was vetoed

London/Islamabad: Benazir Bhutto tried to hire bodyguards from Britain and the United States to protect her in Pakistan but President Pervez Musharraf blocked her plans, according to the former prime minister's senior aides.

"She asked to bring in trained security personnel from abroad. In fact, she and her husband repeatedly tried to get visas for such protection but they're denied by the government of Pakistan," Mark Siegel, her US representative, was quoted by The Sunday Telegraph as saying.

While Benazir had approached the London-based firm Armor Group, which guards UK diplomats in the Middle East, she also negotiated deals with the American Blackwater operation.

Though Armor Group said that it had no knowledge of any talks, a Blackwater spokesman confirmed the negotiations.

"We were approached to provide (former) prime minister Bhutto's security, but an agreement was unfortunately never reached," the spokesperson told the British newspaper, but she refused to go into the precise details.

In fact, Benazir had also contacted officials, diplomats and friends in America, Europe and the Gulf to urge Musharraf to improve her security following the suicide bomb attacks that killed more than 140 during her homecoming parade on October 18.

Another US-based Benazir adviser Husain Haqqani also confirmed that she wanted to use private international security contractors but said that the Musharraf regime would not approve the plan.

Though American diplomats took the highly unusual step of providing her directly with confidential intelligence about militant threats to her life, he claimed that the US, which has arranged for private contractors to guard Afghan President Hamid Karzai and leaders in Iraq, was also reluctant to press Musharraf, its ally, to change his mind.

"This was despite Washington seeing Ms Bhutto as a lynchpin in its crucial diplomatic attempt to encourage Pakistan to return to democracy," he said.

Meanwhile, Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, blamed by Pakistan government for masterminding the assassination of Benazir, had twice sent emissaries to inform her that he was not her enemy, according to a senior leader of her party.

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"Identify your enemy, I am not your enemy, I have nothing to do with you or against you or with the assassination attempt on you on October (18)," Mehsud had said through the emissaries.

Farhatullah Babar, the spokesman for Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), revealed this.

"The top PPP leadership trusted the message," Babar told The News.

Mehsud's message was conveyed through "two different reliable emissaries" after the suicide attack on Benazir's homecoming procession in Karachi on October 18 that killed more than 150 people.

A suicide attacker assassinated Benazir after she addressed an election rally in Rawalpindi on Thursday.

Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema had named Mehsud - a militant leader from South Waziristan who was recently made chief of the Tehrik Taliban-e-Pakistan, a coalition of pro-Taliban groups from northwestern Pakistan - as the mastermind behind both attacks on Benazir.

But Babar said Mehsud had conveyed to Benazir that his activities were limited to Waziristan and were of a "defensive" nature. "I have neither the resources to fight outside Waziristan nor do I have any plans to attack Benazir Bhutto in future," Mehsud had told the PPP leadership.