Pak Media reports on May 10

Benazir murder: another FFC likely: By Shakeel Anjum in The News, May 10
ISLAMABAD: The government is considering setting up of another high-powered Fact Finding Committee, this time with the objective to give a clean chit to Interior Minister Senator Rehman Malik and Law Minister Senator Babar Awan, both of whom are incidentally closest to the president.
According to some sources, this new FFC is being constituted to ensure a clean chit not only to these two ministers but all those who were riding the same Mercedes Benz car, which was stated to be the back-up car and which sped away from the scene of the tragedy moments before the killing of Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007.
The News has learnt on authority that the composition of the second high-powered FFC is under serious consideration. According to sources, a former judge is likely to be nominated to head this second FFC and some top bureaucrats and a senior officer from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) would be its members.
This new FFC is likely to be given two weeks’ time to submit the report. It will have the same one-point mandate — to inquire into the escape of the back-up car and intention of its riders, who fled from the scene of the suicide attack, leaving Ms Bhutto’s vehicle at the mercy of the terrorists. As was the procedure followed by the first FFC, headed by the Cabinet Secretary Abdur Rauf Chaudhry, the second FFC would also record the statements of individuals who were in the car at the time.
They include Rehman Malik, Babar Awan, presidential spokesperson Mr Farhatullah Babar, Lt. Gen. (retd) Tauqir Zia and driver Khizar in addition to some eyewitnesses. Repeated efforts were made to contact Farhatullah Babar for his comments and views as to what necessitated the formation of this second FFC. However, he remained unavailable for some inexplicable reasons.  http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=28760

Zardari yet to receive probe report: By Syed Irfan Raza in The Dawn, May 10
ISLAMABAD, May 9: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is yet to present to President Asif Ali Zardari the report of a three-member fact-finding committee formed by the government to ascertain who had ordered the hosing down of Ms Benazir Bhutto’s assassination site shortly after the terrorist attack, sources in the Presidency told Dawn on Sunday.
Although it is yet to be ascertained why has the prime minister not yet shared the report with the president, sources said Mr Zardari had come to know about the findings and expressed dissatisfaction over it.
The committee is reported to have provided a clean chit to former Director General of Military Intelligence (MI) Maj-Gen Nadeem Ijaz and some top police officials who had allegedly ordered the hosing down of the assassination site on Dec 27, 2007.
“The president has so far not received the report of the committee,” Pesident Zardari’s spokesmnan Farhatullah Babar told Dawn.
He said the report had been prepared on the directives of the prime minister and, therefore, the committee had submitted it to him (the prime minister).
When contacted, Cabinet Secretary Chaudhry Abdul Rauf who headed the committee told Dawn that he had presented the report to the prime minister several days ago.
When asked why it had not been made public despite orders of the president to that effect, the official said: “Our job was to complete the report in a specific time and now it is the prerogative of the prime minister to make it public or not,” Mr Rauf said.
However, Prime Minister’s press secretary Shabbir Anwar said he did not know whether or not the prime minister had received the report.
“I am totally unaware of it,” he said, when asked why the report had not been shared with the president.
Meanwhile, the government has enhanced the purview of a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) which is carrying out a separate investigation into Ms Bhutto’s assassination. But, JIT has no powers to question sitting ministers and military officers.
“The JIT cannot call sitting ministers and military officers who have been accused of being responsible for a security lapse and later hosing down the crime scene,” the official said.
The scope of the JIT, which is working under the FIA, has been enhanced on the orders of President Asif Ali Zardari. www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/zardari-yet-to-receive-probe-report-050

Resentment in PPP over core committee’s powers: By Amir Wasim, Dawn, May 10
ISLAMABAD: There has been a deep resentment in PPP’s ranks over the fact that no meeting of the party’s Central Executive Committee has been convened by the leadership since the release of the United Nations report last month on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Some senior party members are also critical of the “so-called core committee”, which according to some of them, has become more powerful than the CEC.
But PPP’s information secretary Fauzia Wahab thinks otherwise and believes that there is no need for convening the CEC meeting to discuss the UN report.He  defended President Asif Zardari’s decision to form the “core committee” comprising a number of federal ministers and office-bearers, but agreed that it had no legal or constitutional basis and it was only a consultative body.
Not agreeing with Ms Wahab’s assertions, a senior PPP parliamentarian who is also a CEC member told this correspondent that the demand for the UN probe had been originally made by the CEC in a resolution in its first meeting held after Ms Bhutto’s assassination in 2007.
Therefore, he said, it was the responsibility of the party leadership to take the CEC into confidence over the findings of the UN commission and to devise its line of action.
The PPP leader said it was on the CEC’s demand that the government was forced to move a resolution in the National Assembly and then formally write a letter to the UN requesting it to form an inquiry commission.
Moreover, he said, the CEC in the meeting held on December 31, 2007, in Naudero soon after Ms Bhutto’s assassination had called for the UN probe with the aim of exposing the financers, perpetrators, abettors and executors of the assassination plan.
However, he regretted the UN commission was later converted merely into a fact-finding commission.
According to the UN report, he said, “it was agreed with the government of Pakistan that the international commission should be fact-finding in nature and not be a criminal investigation”.
The CEC member said the UN report had categorically stated that “the duty of carrying out a criminal investigation, finding the perpetrators and bringing them to justice, remains with the competent Pakistani authorities”.
He said the UN report had consolidated the party workers’ belief that it was the responsibility of their own government to expose the real culprits.
Another PPP parliamentarian questioned the role of the core committee comprising some federal ministers and a few hand-picked people.
He said the party’s constitution did not allow formation of any committee without prior approval of the CEC.
For the past almost eight months, President Zardari has been regularly convening meetings of the core committee, comprising eight to 10 members, to discuss important national issues. In a meeting of the core committee held soon after the release of the UN commission report last month Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was directed to initiate action against persons whose names had been mentioned in the commission’s report as responsible for inadequate security provided to Ms Bhutto and for hampering the investigation process.
Ms Wahab said the core committee was only a consultative group and it had no other important role.
According to the party constitution, she said, the party leadership was required to convene at least four meetings of the CEC in a year.
She said the last meeting of the CEC was held in Naudero on April 4 on the death anniversary of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
The PPP dissidents, however, say the CEC meetings held on the death and birth anniversaries of Bhuttos are ceremonial in nature and are convened only to pay tribute to the late party leaders.
“In fact, no effective CEC meeting has been convened by the party leadership for over four months,” claims one of the members. http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/resentment-in-ppp-over-core-committees-powers-050