ISLAMABAD - PAKISTAN President Pervez Musharraf said on Thursday said there was no government involvement in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto but admitted he was unsatisfied with the probe into her death.

For the first time since Ms Bhutto was killed in a gun and suicide attack that his government blamed on Al-Qaeda, he acknowledged reports that the crime scene had been quickly hosed down, possibly destroying evidence, after her murder.

Not satisfied

'I am sure that they did not do it with an intention of hiding some secrets or that the intelligence agencies instructed them to hide secrets,' Mr Musharraf told reporters summoned to the presidential palace for a news conference.

'It is just inefficiency on the part of these people who think things have to be cleared and the road has to be cleared and traffic has to go through,' he said.

Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has ridiculed the government account of her death, which said that the shooter had missed her and that she had died fracturing her skull by smashing her head against her vehicle's sunroof.

'One should not give a statement that's 100 percent final and that is a flaw that we suffer from,' Mr Musharraf said, referring to previous interior ministry statements about how Ms Bhutto died.

UN-led probe

The PPP demanded a UN investigation, something government officials have ruled out, but Mr Musharraf announced on Wednesday, in his first major address to the nation since Ms Bhutto's death, that a Scotland Yard team was on the way.

Many Ms Bhutto supporters have angrily blamed the president for her death - if only for failing to provide adequate security after Ms Bhutto survived Pakistan's worst-ever terror attack in October, which left scores dead.

Asked if he had 'blood on his hands,' Mr Musharraf said the question was 'below my dignity' but that he wanted to give a public answer in any case.

'My family by any imagination is not a family which believes in killing people, assassinating, intriguing,' he said.

'That is all that I want to say.'

Political ploy

The postponement of Jan 8 polls until Feb 18 has been criticised as a ploy by Mr Musharraf loyalists in the government to rob the PPP of any sympathy vote it may have won in the aftermath of Ms Bhutto's slaying.

The PPP, the country's largest party, has alleged the delay is an attempt to give Musharraf's allies time to fix the result.

However, he denied that the poll would be tainted.

'You will see that there is no possibility of rigging,' the president said.

Pakistan's opposition parties meanwhile demanded better security on Thursday as they prepared for a lengthy election campaign.

They confirmed they would resume the race to restore democracy here but said the government must ensure candidates are protected from the dangers posed by anyone determined to disrupt the polls.

'We would like the government to provide foolproof security to Mr Sharif, including a bulletproof vehicle,' said Ahsan Iqbal, a spokesman for Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the party of two-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

'We will continue our election campaign but we are revising the party chief's programme of public engagements in view of the current security situation.'

Pakistan's government had provided Ms Bhutto with a bulletproof vehicle and police security but many of her supporters blame Mr Musharraf for failing to stop the gun and suicide-bomb attack which killed her last Thursday in Rawalpindi. -- AFP