ISLAMABAD: A UN commission appointed to investigate the assassination of Pakistan's former prime minister Ms Benazir Bhutto began work on Wednesday, a spokesman said.

The panel, which has a six-month mandate, is being led by the Chilean ambassador to the United Nations, Heraldo Munoz, and includes an Indonesian ex-attorney general and an Irish former police official.

Ms Bhutto, the first woman to become prime minister of a Muslim country, was killed on December 27, 2007 in a gun and suicide attack after addressing an election rally in Rawalpindi, a garrison city near the capital Islamabad.

"The six-month mandate of the Benazir Bhutto commission of inquiry has begun today. The commission is expected to visit Pakistan but the dates are not determined yet," Hiro Ueki, a UN spokesman in Pakistan said while talking to a French news agency.

The United Nations has said the panel will inquire into the facts and circumstances of the assassination, but have made clear it will be up to Pakistan to determine "the criminal responsibility of the perpetrators." 

Meanwhile, a report from New York says that the members of an independent commission tasked with looking into the facts and circumstances surrounding the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto have begun to assemble here to begin their work, UN sources said Wednesday.

For the next two weeks, the three commission members will have a round of briefings at UN Headquarters in New York and start studying relevant documents and papers ahead of their departure to Pakistan. The commission is led by Chile’s U.N. Ambassador Heraldo Munoz, a dissident during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet who heads the U.N. Peace -building Commission.

The other members are former Indonesian attorney general Marzuki Darusman, who is now a member of the National Commission of Human Rights, and Ireland’s former deputy police commissioner Peter Fitzgerald, who has served the U.N. in a number of capacities including heading the initial mission of inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.

Under terms agreed to by the U.N. and the Pakistani government, the commission’s mandate will be “to inquire into the facts and circumstances” of her death, according to the official statement made last week. “The duty of determining criminal responsibility of the perpetrators of the assassination remains with the Pakistani authorities,” it said.

The commission, which will leave for Islamabad in the middle of July, will submit its report to the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon within six months of the start of its work. Ban will share the report with the Government and submit it to the Security Council for information.

The sources said Pakistan’s Interior Ministry, which will be the focal point for the commission, has been asked to provide English translations of the Urdu documents of the investigation conducted so far. The FIR and the reports of local investigation agency are in Urdu. The commission is also expected to work on a list of witnesses to be called for interviews during their stay in Pakistan.