Widow meets with Pakistani president

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The widow of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl thanked Pakistan's president during a face-to-face meeting Wednesday for his efforts to try to save her husband.

Government television said Mariane Pearl told President Pervez Musharraf that she felt his government did everything it could to prevent the killing.

Musharraf expressed his "heartfelt grief" and told Pearl that her husband's murder was a "most barbaric" act of terrorism, according to state television.

The two met in the capital, Islamabad, but the exact location was not given.

Mariane Pearl, who is seven months pregnant with the couple's son, has been in Karachi since her husband's kidnapping there on Jan. 23.

In Washington, the State Department announced a $5 million reward Wednesday for information leading to the arrest or conviction of those responsible for Pearl's kidnapping and murder.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the reward would be advertised in Pakistan in the near future.

Other suspects sought

With the suspected mastermind of Pearl's kidnapping in custody, Pakistani officials are still searching for at least four key suspects. The main target is now Amjad Faruqi, who police believe carried out the abduction and held the American.

The moves came amid indications Pakistan has agreed in principal to hand over Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who confessed in court to planning the kidnapping, to the United States.

A high-ranking Pakistani diplomat told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the government has "no objections" to giving Saeed to the United States once certain legal issues are resolved.

Musharraf could open himself up to nationalist criticism if he surrenders the Islamic militant over for trial in a foreign country.

An indication of the violence such a move could cause came in an anonymous phone call Tuesday that threatened to blow up Karachi's crime investigation department -- the building where Saeed and two other suspects are being interrogated -- if any of the men are extradited.

Security around the building was stepped up Wednesday, as authorities rolled out an armored personal carrier and deployed 50 policemen in bulletproof vests, a police official said.

The diplomat said Pakistan might try Saeed here first, then transfer him to American custody by classifying him as a combatant fighting against the U.S. war on terrorism. That would allow the two countries to bypass the issue of extradition.

No extradition treaty

The United States and Pakistan have no clear extradition treaty, but Pakistan has turned suspects over to the United States in the past.

A U.S. federal grand jury secretly indicted Saeed in the 1994 kidnapping of four Westerners in India, including one American.

Saeed spent five years in an Indian jail for that crime, but was freed in a hostage-prisoner swap after Muslim militants hijacked an Indian airplane.

Musharraf has pledged to rid his country of Islamic extremism, but there are still concerns about a decades-old alliance between Islamic militants and Pakistani intelligence -- forged through years of fighting common enemies in Afghanistan and in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

A videotape delivered Friday to U.S. authorities in Pakistan showed the 38-year-old Pearl being forced to say he was Jewish, followed by graphic images of the journalist's unmoving body being decapitated.

Saeed, 28, had been in custody for more than two weeks when the video was made public. Police say Saeed's confession during a court hearing this month would not be enough to convict because it was not made under oath.