The White House on Thursday urged calm in Pakistan after opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. “We would urge calm, and … after an assassination like this of a political leader, there is a risk of people turning to violence to express their anger,” Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman, told reporters in Crawford, Texas, where President George W. Bush is spending the New Year's holiday. “We would urge calm and hope that all the Pakistanis would mourn her death, celebrate her life, and unite together in opposition to the types of extremists that are trying to stop the march to democracy,” Stanzel said. Meanwhile, Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister called for a national strike on Friday and said his political party would boycott next month's parliamentary elections.
