US ignored Benazir Bhutto's plea: WikiLeaks

Just two months before she was killed in a terror attack, former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto had approached the United States ambassador in Islamabad, asking for help to evaluate her personal security. But her request was ignored, the latest cables published by whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks have revealed.

Bhutto handed over a written request to US Ambassador Anne W Patterson two months before she was killed, asking her to carry out an evaluation of the security because she feared for her life, say the WikiLeaks cables, accessed by a news channel.

The cables reveal that the US chose to look the other way, suggesting that Benazir should work constructively with General Pervez Musharraf's government -- the same organisation that Benazir insisted was out to kill her.

Benazir made the request to the US ambassador immediately after a terror strike killed more than 130 people at a rally organised by the Pakistan Peoples Party on October 18, 2007 in Karachi.

The rally was organised to welcome her after her eight years' exile in Dubai and London.

According to the cables, Bhutto told the US ambassador that she did not believe that the Pakistan government was giving the security that she needed and she was under severe threat.

Suspecting the Musharraf administration's hand in the Karachi attack, Bhutto also complained about the Pakistan government's shoddy probe into the Karachi terror strike, it said.

But Anne Patterson decided not to do that, said the cable.

Bhutto was assassinated on December 27, 2007, during a party rally in Rawalpindi, two weeks before the scheduled Pakistani general elections.