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Bhutto's 19-Year-Old Son To Lead Party

Bhutto's 19-Year-Old Son To Lead Party
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan; As Pakistan remains in mourning and in crisis following the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, CBS News Chief Foreign correspondent Lara Logan has learned that the Bhutto dynasty will continue for another generation. Bilawal, her 19-year-old son is stepping into his mother's shoes, taking over leadership of her political party.

Prospects for elections scheduled on January 8, 2008 look increasingly unlikely and the government continues to insist al Qaeda was responsible for Bhutto's death.

The government says it knows who carried out the attack, but Pakistani police say their investigation is just beginning.

Despite a government-released video which shows a gun being fired at close range towards Bhutto moments before the suicide blast, officials claim she died, not from a bullet or shrapnel wound, but after her head hit a lever on her car.

Violence in reaction to Bhutto's killing continued to rage in the streets of some Pakistani cities Saturday, with hundreds of demonstrators throwing stones and looting stores.

In places where anger had burned most fierce, a heavy police presence backed up by the army plus a vow from President Pervez Musharraf to treat demonstrators harshly, has kept many people off the streets.

The riots however have taken their toll on the country's infrastructure - and on public confidence.

International elections observers who have not already been evacuated are saying there is no way the elections can be held on schedule.

"Because of the violence we have seen, polling stations burned, material destroyed, we cannot even reach all the polling stations and supply them," Michael Gahler of The European Union Observer Mission tells CBS News Correspondent Sheila MacVicar.

On the streets people are beginning to agree. Not because they don't want democracy, reports MacVicar, but because elections right now could not possibly be fair.

Pakistan's emergency election committee today announced it will meet Monday to decide whether elections can be held as scheduled in just 10 days.

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Added: Dec-30-2007 
By: bellava
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Tags: Bhutto's, 19-Year-Old, Son, To, Lead, Party
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