Islamabad - Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who was made the head of Pakistan's main opposition party following the assassination of his mother Benazir Bhutto, left the country on Tuesday to return to university in England, party officials said. "He left this afternoon for Dubai from where he will be heading for London to continue his studies at Oxford University," said Sheri Rehman, a spokeswoman for Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
His two younger sisters accompanied him to Dubai.
Bilawal, 19, was appointed on Sunday as chairman of PPP, the country's largest party, with his father and Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zardari as the co-chairman.
The appointments came after Zardari declined to accept the chairmanship of the party as Bhutto had recommended in her will and passed it on to Bilawal, the successor to the Bhutto political dynasty.
Analysts believe Bilawal's appointment is symbolic given his age and the fact that Zardari will actually be running the day-to-day party affairs. At only 19, the Oxford Law student must wait six more years before being legally eligible to run for parliament.
Bhutto was slain last Thursday in a gun-suicide bomb attack, which the government has blamed on Baitullah Mehsud, an al-Qaeda-linked Taliban Pakistani tribal militant. Bilawal was on winter break and visiting his family in Pakistan when the slaying occurred.
Elections scheduled for January 8 were due to be delayed by at least a month, with a formal announcement scheduled to take place on Wednesday, followed by a televised address to the nation by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf that night.
Meanwhile, Oxford University was assessing ways of providing security for Bilawal, reported state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) while citing a report in British newspaper The Telegraph.
"We take the security of all our students, including high-profile students, extremely seriously," a University spokesman told the paper.
According to the paper, the university is expected to take advice from the intelligence services and Thames Valley police as it prepares to welcome the teenager back to Oxford.
The paper said that a special debate will be held on January 17 in honour of his mother that he is expected to attend. As a member of the faculty of History, he spent his first term studying British history, and will return to study general history.
The APP said while citing another report in the British daily The Times that Scotland Yard's specialist protection branch, SO1, will make an assessment of the risk to Bilawal's life. If they decide that he is at risk of assassination, they will liaise with Thames Valley Police to provide him with armed protection.
SO1 protects the British Prime Minister and other government members and foreign dignitaries visiting Britain but it also provides security to "high-profile persons considered to be under threat from terrorist attack," the APP said.
Police and university authorities have experience in dealing with high-profile students. Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former US President, completed a two-year masters in international relations in 2003, and Tony Blair's son, Nicky, finished his degree in modern history in the summer at the Oxford University.
Bilawal, however, is a unique case. First-year students could find themselves sharing a lecture theatre with the leader of a country's governing party.
