After winning Pakistan's parliamentary elections last month, the party of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto will name a new prime minister next week, a spokesman said Saturday. Followers of Bhutto, a two-time prime minister who returned to Pakistan last year only to die in a December suicide attack, won the largest number of seats in Feb. 18 polls - ousting allies of US-backed President Pervez Musharraf and easing Pakistan back toward democracy after years of military rule. Her Pakistan People's Party has pledged to form a coalition government with the party of another former premier, Nawaz Sharif, after the new parliament convenes Monday. With the largest number of seats, it falls to the PPP to name a prime minister. On Saturday, party spokesman Farhatullah Babar said a decision was imminent. “Our party will come up with a name next week,” Babar told The Associated Press. Parliament would then have to confirm the nomination. A caretaker prime minister, Mohammedmian Soomro, has held the office since November, after parliament's mandate expired and before new elections could be held. Soomro presided over the last Cabinet meeting Saturday in Islamabad. Among those considered front-runners for the position is Makhdoom Amin Fahim, the PPP vice chairman and a veteran politician whose father helped Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, establish the party in the 1960s. On Saturday, Fahim called himself a “strong candidate” and said he was puzzled by the PPP's delay in naming him. “What I have done wrong to my party?” he told Pakistan's Express news channel. Addressing rumors that he had fallen out with the party's leadership over an alleged secret meeting between him and Musharraf, Fahim said: “If anyone saw me meeting with Musharraf, he should come forward and say it.” The PPP's delay in naming Fahim or another candidate has fueled growing speculation that Bhutto's widower, who jointly leads the party with the couple's 19-year-old son, wants the job for himself. Asif Ali Zardari is currently ineligible because he did not run for a seat in parliament. But he could maneuver by naming an interim prime minister, then contest a by-election and win a seat to qualify as early as this summer. Meanwhile, a judge in Karachi on Saturday granted the police authority to question a man arrested in connection with an attack at a welcoming rally for Bhutto last October that killed 150 people. Investigator Khalid Ranjha said the suspect, Qari Saifullah Akhtar, would be held until at least March 27 for questioning. __
