The husband of murdered Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto used the climax of a 40-day Muslim mourning period to vow that he would risk assassination to win a posthumous election victory for his late wife.

“If I am martyred before completing the mission of Benazir Bhutto, then I should also be buried here,” Asif Ali Zardari said in a speech on Thursday to thousands of mourners gathered outside a white marble mausoleum in his wife’s ancestral village.

Pakistan votes for a new parliament and provincial assembly in an election that was delayed until February 18 after Bhutto’s assassination in the garrison town of Rawalpindi on December 27.

While not a presidential election, the outcome could have serious consequences for US ally President Pervez Musharraf, who came to power as a general in a coup in 1999 and is now going through his most unpopular period.

Zardari, who a day earlier scotched talk that he wanted to become prime minister, has not said whether he favoured working with or against Musharraf should the Pakistan People’s Party ride a wave of sympathy to victory in the vote later this month.

The PPP’s likely choice for the premiership is its deputy chairman, Makhdoom Amin Fahim.

About 20,000 people gathered in the village of Garhi Khuda Baksh to pay their last respects to the most charismatic Pakistani politician of the past 20 years.

Chants of Koranic verses and sombre hymns filled the chilly morning air in the dusty village set amid paddy fields in a rural backwater of southern Sindh province.

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