Lahore, Feb 6: A day after the publication of Benazir Bhutto’s one-page “political will”, her husband and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari has said that he may or may not opt to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan.

In a telephonic interview to Newsweek, Zardari claimed that the PPP rank and file recognised him like none other in the party.

Addressing party office-bearers, Benazir wrote in her will that, “I would like my husband ... Zardari to lead you in this interim period until you and he decide what is best,” the magazine quoted her handwritten will, as saying.

“Zardari is considered a mistrusted — and divisive — figure in Pakistan. He is widely blamed for the tangle of corruption that strangled and cut short Benazir’s terms in office,” according to the magazine.

Newsweek also quotes Syed Farooq Hasnat, a scholar at Washington’s Middle East Institute, as saying, “Pakistanis are not ready for Zardari.”

Asked whether he was now interested in the prime ministership, Zardari told the magazine, “In order to be prime minister you have to be a member of parliament. I’m not running for this parliament at the moment.”

Asked how he could justify the rather feudal practice of making a modern political party a family legacy, Zardari told Newsweek that he was following his wife’s lead.

“She herself started her career as co-chairman with her mother,” the Daily Times quoted him as telling the magazine. (ANI)