Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto waves from her car just seconds before being assassinated after a political rally in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, yesterday. Getty Images / John Moore

Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, touring the Middle East and Southwest Asia with a congressional delegation yesterday, was on his way to have dinner with former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto when he learned she had been attacked.

“We were going over to have dinner at her house,” Kennedy said yesterday in a telephone interview from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. “I was just leaving my room on my way to dinner. Someone I was traveling with said, go back into my room and look at TV.”

Rep. Patrick Kennedy, second from left, and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., pay their respects. AP / Chris Bradish

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The early reports on television were grim, but word through the U.S. Embassy said that Bhutto’s injuries were superficial and that the Pakistani media were exaggerating the severity of the attack. In less than an hour, though, Kennedy and the rest of the world learned she had died.

“The country now has obviously become engulfed in flames,” the Rhode Island Democrat said. “It’s clearly an enormous setback for a nation that was seeking to stabilize itself after a very tumultuous time.”

The delegation will cut its trip short by a day on the advice of the State Department.

Pakistan had just emerged from a period of several weeks of martial law during which the country’s Supreme Court judges were summarily removed from office and the turmoil threatened to postpone parliamentary elections now scheduled for Jan. 8.

Kennedy said Pakistanis took the death of the opposition leader as a personal loss.

“It’s clear from what’s going on now here in Pakistan that this has definitely touched a deep chord in this society because she was such a symbol of hope for a new democracy. She kind of gave promise to people that there was a new day coming,” he said. “It was more than just her life being taken, but hope for millions of Pakistanis.”

Kennedy was staying at the Serena Hotel in Islamabad, the same city where Bhutto made her home. She was attacked in Rawalpindi, a city eight miles south of the capital. He had met earlier in the day in Islamabad with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and, separately, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Yesterday would not have been the first time Kennedy met Bhutto. When she was prime minister in the early 1990s, she visited the United States. Kennedy greeted her during a stop at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston.

After learning Bhutto had died, Kennedy and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., went to the headquarters of Pakistan People’s Party, the opposition party that Bhutto led. They laid a wreath there and expressed the condolences of the United States. They chose the party headquarters over her home because of the protesters that were gathering outside her residence. “There was no way we were going to get close to her house,” Kennedy said.

Bhutto’s death has left the Pakistan People’s Party and the political campaign leading up to next month’s elections in chaos.

“She is the party,” Kennedy said. “There’s been a lot of speculation over the media so far that the elections might be postponed.” No one is focusing on politics, and many wonder whether an election that will be viewed as legitimate can be held so soon after the assassination, he said. “Clearly now it’s just a time of personal tragedy.”

Kennedy said Pakistanis were already placing blame for the assassination. “Most people think it was religious extremists that had a hand in this.”

As the first woman to lead an Islamic nation, Bhutto drew the ire of radical Muslim fundamentalists, Kennedy said. “She represented modernity in a way that was a real threat to Islamic extremism.”

He also noted that many are criticizing Musharraf’s government for not providing better security for Bhutto. But, Kennedy added, Bhutto’s campaign style of mingling among large, uncontrolled crowds made providing security nearly impossible.

Kennedy looked beyond placing blame.

“We just have to be in solidarity with our friends in Pakistan,” he said. “We have to stand with them.”

With Associated Press reports.

pparker@projo.com