Benazir Bhutto

After three days of national mourning, life in this grief- and violence-stricken land limped back toward normal Monday as residents crept gingerly out of their homes to buy supplies, greet their neighbors and reanimate cityscapes that had turned into virtual ghost towns following the assassination last week of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

With the party of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto pushing for elections to be held on schedule next week, President Pervez Musharraf's government appeared poised Monday to postpone the vote well into February. Pakistan's Election Commission, which is made up of Musharraf supporters, was to have announced today that the vote would be delayed. But the decision was so contentious that the announcement was put off until Wednesday.

As the U.S. election season shifts creakily into higher gear, our leaders are enthusiastically lionizing slain Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto. The former prime minister "returned to Pakistan to fight for democracy," noted Hillary Clinton. "The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a tragic event ... for democracy," mourned Rudy Giuliani. Meanwhile, President Bush urged Pakistanis "to honor Benazir Bhutto's memory by continuing with the democratic process for which she so bravely gave her life."

During the stormy years Benazir Bhutto ruled Pakistan, her husband was a top power broker and a prime target of corruption allegations that toppled her. The assassination of the former prime minister has pushed her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, back into the heart of the storm. Their political party this week named Zardari to run its day-to-day affairs while appointing the couple's 19-year-old son to the ceremonial role of chairman.

Scotland Yard investigators arrived Friday in Pakistan to help investigate the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, although the extent of their mandate was unclear. The team of British anti-terrorism officers was dispatched after President Pervez Musharraf, under intense criticism over the handling of the Bhutto inquiry, agreed to accept outside assistance. Musharraf's government initially had rebuffed international participation of any kind in the investigation.

Since 1823, it has been a chamber of civilized, if sometimes outrageous, debate. In the shelter of the Oxford Union's weathered mahogany wainscoting, long oak benches and high, leaded glass windows, Malcolm X called for black empowerment "by any means necessary."

Squeezed into segregated public buses with scant seats reserved for women, schoolteacher Suneela Mohsin thinks of Benazir Bhutto. She thinks of the slain leader when she walks crowded streets, forbidden to talk to strange men in public or even make eye contact in this society dominated by men. "Our culture offers women very little public space," she said, wearing a deep maroon dupatta, the traditional shawl-like covering, around her head and body. "Benazir was our last hope of change.

Pakistani officials announced Thursday that two more arrests had been made in connection with the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. The arrests were the first apparent break in the case since last month, when police detained two suspects, including a teenage boy who told authorities he had been designated a backup suicide bomber in a continuing effort to assassinate the former prime minister. Bhutto was killed in a gun-and-bomb attack Dec.

In findings similar to those of the Pakistani government, Scotland Yard investigators asserted Friday that Benazir Bhutto died of a head injury resulting from the force of a suicide blast, not by shots fired toward her seconds earlier.