Benazir Bhutto's Will Made Public

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 5, 2008 — -- Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto wanted her husband to lead her party on an "interim basis" if anything happened to her, according to a will released today and written two days before she returned to Pakistan in October.

Asif Ali Zardari, the man Bhutto married when she was 34, became the co-chairman of the Pakistan People's Party after she was killed in a suicide bomb attack Dec. 27.

"I would like my husband, Asif Ali Zardari, to lead you in this interim period until you and he decide what is best," Bhutto wrote in the handwritten will, dated Oct. 16, 2007.

"I say this because he is a man of courage and honor. He spent 11½ years in prison without bending despite torture. He has the political stature to keep our party united."

The PPP decided it was best for Zardari to become co-chairman of the party with his 19-year-old son Bilawal, a student at Oxford University. The will had been read to the PPP's executive committee after her death, but had not been disclosed publicly before today.

Its secrecy created some controversy. Critics publicly questioned the legitimacy of Zardari's claim to power. He is widely viewed as corrupt in Pakistan and known as "Mr. 10 Percent" for the allegations that he skimmed off the top, while Bhutto was serving as prime minister in the 1990s.

"Whatever misgivings about the will, if they were there, have now been completely removed," PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar told ABC News.

Analysts say today's release will help Zardari's political standing inside and outside the party. Analysts have suggested that that he could become PPP's candidate for prime minister, should the party win enough seats in the Feb. 18 elections.

But in an interview with ABC News, Zardari denied he was angling for the top job.

"I'm not running for the member of the parliament. The law of the end is that you have to be a parliamentarian to become the prime minister," he said by phone from Larkana, the ancestral Bhutto family home. "So even if the party wins…technically I can not even be prime minister."