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January 6, 2009

Bakhtawar Bhutto

      *The eldest daughter of Pakistan's assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has written a rap song to express anguish over her mother's death.

       "My mother was murdered. I don't even comprehend. Was it worth dying for? I'm walking through screened doors," Bakhtawar, 18, says in "I Would Take the Pain Away."       

       "No comfort or ease. I'm begging you please God bless the deceased," she continues.      

       Information Minister Sherry Rehman, Bhutto's longtime aide, said Bakhtawar wrote the lyrics and music herself. An accompanying five-minute video of clips and photographs of Benazir Bhutto has been broadcast on the state-run Pakistani television and posted on YouTube. [Scroll down to watch.]

       "It's a tribute of a grieving daughter to her iconic and loving mother," Rehman told Reuters on Monday.      

       A student at Britain's Edinburgh University, Bakhtawar always viewed music as a hobby and had no plan to pursue it as a career, Rehman said.      

       Bhutto, 54, was murdered in a suicide gun-and-bomb attack in the city of Rawalpindi in December 2007. The then government, led by former president Pervez Musharraf, blamed the attack on Islamist militants.      

       Bhutto's widower and Bakhtawar's father, Asif Ali Zardari, become president in September.

"I Would Take the Pain Away" -  Bakhtawar Bhutto