Ms Fatima's striking looks, strong will and charm have led to comparisons with her famous aunt and suggestions by political observers that she could be an eventual political successor despite deep rifts within the Bhutto family.

'I am also a political Bhutto - and I also know how the name restricts me,' Ms Fatima, a poet and author, told a literary festival in the northern Indian city of Jaipur.

'I don't want to be a political inheritor and would like to make my own mark. Politics in Pakistan should promote the new generation beyond the lineage system,' she said, according to India's Mail Today.

Ms Fatima wrote several articles critical of her aunt around the time Benazir returned to Pakistan late last year to contest forthcoming elections.

She called her aunt 'the most dangerous woman in Pakistan' before Benazir was slain at a campaign rally in December.

'I don't regret that I wrote against my aunt, but I am terribly grieved with the way she was done to death,' Ms Fatima was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

'The attack on her was an attack on Pakistan. The Bhuttos have paid a very high price for being in politics,' she said.

Ms Fatima said if she wrote against Benazir, 'it was never personal, always political.'

Ms Fatima's father, Murtaza Ali Bhutto, was gunned down in mysterious circumstances in 1996.

Her family accuses Pakistani security forces of killing Murtaza, who had fallen out with his sister Benazir and become a political rival.

Murtaza's death took place when Benazir was prime minister - an event for which Fatima has said she holds her aunt 'morally responsible'. -- AFP