Senator Arlen Specter (Republican from Pennsylvania) and Representative Patrick Kennedy (Democrat from Rhode Island) were supposed to meet yesterday with Benazir Bhutto and President Pervez Musharraf, but they have been told by the State Department to cut short their visit and return to the United States. Both congressmen said they were shocked by yesterday's events, and acknowledged that the U.S. strategy for Pakistan has been imperiled. “Our foreign policy had relied on her presence as a stabilizing force,” Specter said, emotionally describing her death as “a real, real, real shock.” “I couldn't believe it,” Kennedy said in a telephone interview from Pakistan. “You could really feel the tragedy of this loss because Bhutto really represented hope here for so many people.”
