Parade Stands By Bhutto Cover

Publisher Calls Interview Too 'Important' to Pull Back

NEW YORK, Jan. 6 -- An interview with Benazir Bhutto before the former Pakistani prime minister was assassinated was important enough to keep on the cover of Parade magazine, the magazine's publisher said Sunday, even though the publication had gone to print and could not reflect news of Bhutto's death.

Randy Siegel said that Parade went to press on Dec. 21 and was already on its way to the 400 newspapers that distribute it, including The Washington Post, when Bhutto was killed Dec. 27 at a campaign rally in her country.

The Web version of the story was updated, Siegel said, but it was too late to change the magazine. He said the only option other than running the outdated article would have been asking newspapers not to distribute the magazine.

"We decided that this was an important interview to share with the American people," he said.

The Post ran an editor's note on the front page, as did other newspapers, explaining that the magazine had gone to press before Bhutto's death.

In the interview, Bhutto said that her enemies want her dead.

"I am what terrorists most fear, a female political leader fighting to bring modernity to Pakistan," Bhutto told author Gail Sheehy. "Now they're trying to kill me."

Sheehy, the best-selling author of books including "Passages" and "Hillary's Choice," spent several days with Bhutto in late November at her home town of Larkana, Siegel said.

Parade, published by Parade Publications, is distributed by Sunday newspapers including the Boston Globe, the Dallas Morning News and the Los Angeles Times.

Bhutto, 54, served two terms as Pakistan's leader after her father, Zulkifar Bhutto, was overthrown as prime minister and hanged.

Sheehy asked Bhutto whether she had healed from the trauma of her father's death when she was 25.

Bhutto, a pro-American moderate who had vowed to fight Islamic extremists if she were elected in an upcoming parliamentary vote, said her father's parting words before his execution were: "You can walk away. You're young. You can go to live in London or Paris or Geneva."

She told Sheehy that she responded: "No, I have to keep up this mission of yours, of democracy."