Peshawar, Dec 29: Baitullah Mehsud was not behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, his spokesman has said.

"I strongly deny it. Tribal people have their own customs. We don't strike women," Mehsud's spokesman Maulvi Omar said from an undisclosed location.

Earlier, the Pakistan Government identified militant leader Baitullah Mehsud as the chief suspect behind the attack, a foreign news agency reported.

"We have an intercept from Baitullah Mehsud this morning in which he congratulated his people for carrying out this act," Interior Ministry spokesman, Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, said.

"We have irrefutable evidence that al Qaeda and its networks are trying to destabilise the government," he added.

"They have been systematically attacking our government, and now a political icon." Bhutto, he said, was on the hit list of al Qaeda and other terrorists. (ANI)