Benazir Bhutto's 19-year-old son Bilawal has been chosen to take over her Pakistan People's Party, after her assassination on Thursday.

It is thought he will take the role in a ceremonial capacity while he finishes his studies at Oxford University.

Bilawal told journalists at the Bhutto family home: "My mother always said democracy is the best revenge."

Ms Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, who is expected to run the party, said it would contest January elections.

And he appealed to the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to drop his threat to boycott the polls.

"Today's general would like to run (from the election)," he said, in a reference to President Musharraf. "We would not like to give him that chance."

Mr Zardari and his son were speaking at a news conference after a meeting of the leadership of the PPP to hear Ms Bhutto's political will.

Another senior party official, vice-chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim, said Ms Bhutto had named Mr Zardari as her successor as party chairman.
But he said Mr Zardari had turned it down in favour of his son - a decision he said the party leadership had endorsed.

Mr Zardawi also announced that the couple's children would now change their name to Bhutto.

Sitting between his father and Mr Fahim, Bilawal himself said his father would run the party while he was away at university.

But Mr Zardari blocked any further reporters' questions to Bilawal, saying that although chairman, he was still of "tender age".

Delay calls

	Bilawal and his father Asif Ali Zardari poised to control the PPP

Meanwhile Pakistan's ruling party has said elections set for 8 January are likely to be delayed for several weeks.

Tariq Azim of the ruling PML-Q party said the vote would "lose credibility" if held under current conditions.

Opposition parties have been calling for a delay, amid widespread unrest and political disarray following the murder of Ms Bhutto.

Mr Azim said a delay would allow the PPP more time to re-organise.

"It seems more than likely that elections will be delayed," he said.

He was quoted by the AFP news agency saying that his own party had suspended its campaigning "because of the prevailing situation".

"We do not have a climate in which we can canvass voters," he said.

He said the vote might be delayed for anything between six and 12 weeks.

Pakistan has been swept by unrest since Ms Bhutto's death, and several parties have threatened to boycott the poll.

Pakistan's election commission has called an emergency meeting for Monday, to decide whether the poll should be delayed.

Troops have been deployed in several main cities after two days of rioting and looting left hundreds of shops and vehicles, along with several election offices, in ruins, while roads have been deserted and businesses shut.

At least 38 people have died in the unrest, the government has said.

There has been continued confusion over exactly how Ms Bhutto died.

Mr Zardari called for a UN-style investigation into the death, similar to that launched in the wake of the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri.

He also said that he had denied requests for Ms Bhutto's body to be subjected to a post mortem, saying it would have been an "insult".

Pakistani television has released new pictures it said showed Ms Bhutto's attackers - a gunman and a suicide bomber. They also apparently showed Ms Bhutto was inside her car, and no longer standing through the sun roof, when the explosion happened.

The images perpetuated the dispute over Ms Bhutto's death.
Interior ministry spokesman Brig Javed Iqbal Cheema said on Friday that she was killed when the force of the bomb blast knocked her head against a sun roof fitting, and was not hit by bullets.

The PPP has insisted she was killed by two bullets, one of which pierced her skull and another which hit her in the neck.

Source: BBC