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1953-2007
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Benazir Bhutto, the eldest child of former President of Pakistan
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was born on June 21, 1953, at Karachi.
In June 1973, she graduated from Harvard University with a
degree in political science. After graduating, she joined Oxford
University in the fall of 1973.
Bhutto returned to Pakistan in June 1977. She was nominated as
the Prime Minister on Dec. 2, 1988. At the age of 35, she was the
youngest and the first woman Prime Minister to lead a Muslim nation
in modern age. She returned to power, by winning the October 1993
elections. Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari dismissed her government in
November 1996 on corruption charges.
Bhutto is President Pervez Musharraf's unlikely ally in the
nation's political process of recent years, sometime combative,
sometime conciliatory.
In 2007, a deal between Musharraf and her cleared the way for
Bhutto to return home from exile in Britain and Dubai on the
understanding that Musharraf would step down from his army job and
then serve another five-year term as president while Bhutto would
lead her Pakistan People's Party to parliamentary success in early
2008 and serve as Prime Minister.?
Bhutto also attempted to unite two key strands of the country's
fragmented opposition by visiting deposed chief justice in his
barricaded home Nov. 10 in the capital.
Bhutto, 54, died in a hospital Thursday evening after a suicide
attack rocked her election rally at the Liaquat Bagh park in
Rawalpindi, some 30 km south from Islamabad. It was the second
suicide attack targeting Bhutto since she returned from eight years
of self-imposed exile in October. The first struck a welcome-home
rally, killing 139 people.
(Xinhua News Agency December 28, 2007)
