Pakistan believes kidnapped reporter is alive

The Pakistan government says it remains hopeful that kidnapped American reporter Daniel Pearl will be rescued alive.

Mr Pearl's case is to be taken up by a top US Treasury official, Kenneth Dam, who has arrived in Islamabad for meetings with President Pervez Musharraf.

Mr Dam, deputy Treasury secretary, is to urge Musharraf's government "to do everything it can" to speed Pearl's release, US officials said.

But 12 days after his kidnapping and fruitless appeals from his newspaper for proof that he is still alive, Pearl's fate remained unknown.

Not since Wednesday have Pearl's captors released a photo of him via e-mail.

Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider insisted that Pakistani investigators "are doing their level best."

"We are optimistic about the safe recovery of Pearl," he said.

Mr Pearl, 38, the Wall Street Journal's South Asian bureau chief, was working on a story about Islamic fundamentalists and trying to arrange an interview with the leader of a small militant group, Sheik Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, when he was abducted on January 23 in the crime-ridden southern city of Karachi.

Mr Gilani was arrested last week and Haider said he remains in custody. But investigators are uncertain whether he was involved in the abduction.

Hoax e-mails which purported to come from Pearl's kidnappers, including one which claimed his body had been dumped in a Karachi graveyard, have complicated the investigation.

The discovery of the body of a light-skinned man in his late 30s in Karachi yesterday led to initial reports that it was Mr Pearl's. But police said the corpse was that of an Iranian.