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ENSTRANGED: Ms Ghinwa Bhutto, widow of Benazir's younger brother Murtaza, sitting beside a picture of the assassinated former premier in an interview in Larkana on Monday. Ghinwa held Benazir responsible for the killing of her husband 12 years ago. -- PHOTO: AFP
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LARKANA (PAKISTAN) - AFTER years of discord in Pakistan's top political dynasty, Ms Benazir Bhutto's sister-in-law has stoked up the family feud by saying she wants the opposition leader's son to join her rival party.
Ms Ghinwa Bhutto has been estranged from the former premier since her husband, Benazir's younger brother Murtaza, was gunned down amid shady circumstances in Karachi 12 years ago while Benazir was still in power.
Ghinwa held Benazir responsible for her husband's death.
In the latest twist to the feuding that has torn the country's 'royal family' apart, Lebanese-born Ghinwa said that after Benazir's assassination she now hopes to woo the 19-year-old Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to her side.
'We'll try to bring him to our party,' Ghinwa told AFP at her sprawling home in the southern town of Larkana - a portrait of her husband on one side of her and a photograph of a young Benazir on the other.
Asked how she intended to get the Oxford undergraduate to defect, she said: 'I don't know, with love and affection and education. Maybe when he comes back he might like our set-up better than the set-up of the other party.'
Any such move would be fiercely resisted by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which kept the leadership in the family for a third generation by naming Bilawal and his father Asif Ali Zardari as co-chairmen after Benazir's death.
Ghinwa heads a breakaway faction called the Pakistan People's Party-Shaheed Bhutto - named in honour of her 'martyr (shaheed)' husband - for which she is standing as an MP in Pakistan's Feb 18 elections.
She said that without Benazir at its helm the PPP could split, adding that her party would welcome Bilawal when he returns to Pakistan because he is the rightful heir to the legacy of his grandfather, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
'I don't know what would be left of the other party. And if he sees I'm making a party here for everybody to work with... to deliver this legacy to the people, he might like it,' she said.
She described Bilawal as a 'sweet child, always willing to get in touch, always willing to speak, always willing to hug and kiss his cousins and even me' despite the strains in the family.
She said the important thing is to unify a family whose history has been stained in blood and rancour since the execution of former premier Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1979 by a military regime.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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