Keeping the election on track was the biggest immediate concern in sustaining an American policy of promoting stability, moderation and democracy in Pakistan, US officials said Friday.
Bhutto's death left her populist party without a clear successor. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who was freed in December 2004 after eight years in detention on graft charges, is one contender to head the party although he lacks the cachet of a blood relative from the Bhutto clan's political dynasty.
Throughout the day, hundreds of thousands of mourners arrived in Bhutto's hometown of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh in tractors, buses, cars and jeeps for her funeral cortege and burial.
Bhutto's plain wood coffin, draped in the red, green and black flag of her Pakistan People's Party, was carried in a white ambulance toward the marble mausoleum about three miles away, passing a burning passenger train on the way.
