Fears grow for reporter missing in Pakistan
Fears are growing for a US reporter apparently taken hostage in Pakistan.
Washington is offering to "give whatever help can be given" to find Daniel Pearl.
Mr Pearl has been missing since January 23 when he went to interview members of a radical Islamic group in Karachi.
The Southeast Asia bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal is thought to have been researching a story about Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber" from London.
The group he was meeting is suspected of having links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Secretary of State Colin Powell had discussed the case by telephone with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf yesterday, and had "noted our strong interest in seeing it resolved."
An e-mail accusing Pearl of being a CIA officer posing as a journalist was sent to various US newspapers from a group calling itself The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, which claims responsibility for Pearl's disappearance.
The Journal and the CIA have dismissed the allegation that Pearl is with the CIA.
In Pakistan, police sources say they have not heard of the group. Instead, they believe Pearl, 38, was kidnapped by Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, which has close ties to al-Qaida and is on the US government's terrorist organisations list.
The e-mail said Pearl was being held in "inhuman conditions", similar to those experienced by Pakistani prisoners at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The e-mail - which was not sent to the Wall Street Journal - was accompanied by four photographs purporting to show Pearl chained in captivity. One showed him hunched over with a gun to his head.
It adds the group demanding that Pakistanis detained in Cuba by the US military be allowed access to their lawyers and families. The e-mail was sent using Microsoft's free e-mail service, Hotmail, with the user name "kidnapperguy,".
