ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 30 (UPI) -- Pakistan's finance minister and shoo-in prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, survived a suicide bombing Friday, but eight others, including his driver, died, officials said.
As many as 50 people, including a provincial minister and an army officer were injured.
Aziz, a former City Bank executive from New York, was getting into his car after addressing an election rally at Fateh Jang, a town near Islamabad, when two bombs exploded.
Police described the would-be assassin as "a clean-shaven man with glasses, who blew himself up while approaching the minister's car."
Secretary-general of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, Mushahid Hussain, said the minister was safe. He gave no further details.
Pakistan's military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, who also has survived several attempts on life, has encouraged Aziz to run for the prime minister's position after forcing the former prime minister, Zafarullah Jamali, to resign.
Attempts on Musharraf were orchestrated by the al-Qaida network for supporting the U.S.-led "war on terror." "And the same people may have been involved in this attack as well," said Hussain.
"The attack has further strengthened my resolve to serve Pakistan," Aziz told state-run Pakistan Television after he returned to Islamabad. He was shown on PTV almost two hours after the attack.
Musharraf and the current Pakistani prime minister, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, condemned the suicide attack and ordered an immediate inquiry.
Information and Broadcasting Minister Shaikh Rashid said the government will have to further strengthened security arrangements for Cabinet members and senior officials.
He acknowledged that Pakistani security apparatus is not trained to deal with modern methods of terrorism, such as suicide bombing.
Aziz, 55, is a member of the upper house of the Pakistani Parliament but has to win a seat in the lower house called the National Assembly before he can become the prime minister, as required by the Pakistani Constitution.
After the election, he will have to take a vote of confidence from the National Assembly to become the prime minister.
Musharraf, who came to power by a bloodless military coup in October 1999, restored partial democracy two years ago, re-establishing the two houses of Parliament and the office of the prime minister.
But in June, he made the first post-martial law prime minister, Jamali, resign because of undisclosed differences and appointed an interim prime minister, Hussain.
While negotiating Jamali's departure with the members of the ruling party, Musharraf also suggested that Aziz should contest election for the lower house so that he could be taken as the permanent prime minister.
Under Musharraf's advice, the ruling party arranged for two of its parliamentarians to resign so that Aziz could be elected before the next general elections due in two years.
Aziz was addressing an election rally in one of the two constituencies when attacked.
Musharraf has often publicly praised Aziz for turning around Pakistan's economy, which was close to bankruptcy when Aziz joined the Musharraf government as finance minister in 1999.
Musharraf's political maneuverings, however, have annoyed many, both in the opposition and within the ruling party. Some Pakistani politicians openly criticize Aziz for being an outsider with no constituency in Pakistan because he spent most of his adult life in the United States and other countries.
"He cannot be elected a counselor, let alone the prime minister, without Musharraf's support. Politically, he is a nobody," said Makhdoum Amin Fahim of the opposition People's Party.
Opposition parties have fielded joint candidates to block his entry into the National Assembly.
Aziz is also opposed by Pakistan's religious parties which says are too close to the United States.
But political observers in Pakistan say neither of the two groups is capable of arranging an assassination attempt on Aziz.
"This a terrorist attack," said Rashid Khalid, who teaches politics at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University. "Suicide bombing is a new phenomenon, introduced by al-Qaida. Before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, we had never seen such attacks in Pakistan."
Suicide bombings followed Musharraf's decision to abandon Pakistan's former Taliban allies and joined the U.S. camp in the "war against terror" after the terrorist attacks in the United States.
Pakistan's support enabled the United States to easily defeat the Taliban and install a pro-Western government in Kabul. But the move also annoyed the Taliban and al-Qaida who lost their operational bases and headquarters in Afghanistan.
Last year, there were two attempts on Musharraf. In the second attempt on Christmas day, the attackers came very close to getting Musharraf who survived but lost a dozen security guards.
Saleem Shehzad, a journalist who specializes in terrorist groups operating in the South Asian region, told a Pakistani television channel ARY Thursday that al-Qaida was planning attacks on Pakistani targets both in and out the country.
He said his sources had told him that al-Qaida had chalked out a new plan to target senior government officials in Pakistan. The attempt on Aziz came hours after the warning.
