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December 27, 2007

Update: Rep. Kennedy was on way to dinner with Bhutto

Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy was in Pakistan today with a congressional delegation when former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated at a campaign rally in Rawalpindi.

The Rhode Island Democrat was leaving his hotel room to go to Bhutto’s house in Islamabad for dinner when someone in his party told him to go back to his room and watch the televised news reports of the attack on Bhutto.

“The country now has obviously become engulfed in flames,” Kennedy said this afternoon from Islamabad, in a telephone interview with The Providence Journal. “It’s clearly an enormous setback for a nation that was seeking to stabilize itself after a very tumultuous time.”

Kennedy said Pakistanis took the death of the opposition leader as a personal loss.

“It’s clear from what’s going on now here in Pakistan that this has definitely touched a deep cord in this society because she was such a symbol of hope for a new democracy. She kind of gave promise to people that there was a new day coming,” he said. “It was more than just her life being taken, but hope for millions of Pakistanis.”

Kennedy said that, after watching TV reports, he received word through the U.S. Embassy that Bhutto’s wounds were superficial and that the Pakistani media were exaggerating the severity of the attack.

After learning Bhutto had died, Kennedy and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., went to the headquarters of her political party, where they laid a wreath and expressed the condolences of the United States. They chose the party headquarters over her home because of the protesters that were gathering outside her residence. “There was no way we were going to get close to her house,” he said.

Kennedy had met earlier in the day with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and, separately, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

-- Journal staff writer Paul Edward Parker

Posted by Andrea Panciera  at 3:54 PM | Permalink

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