Phil Ammar

Staff Writer

Pakistani investigators continued a nationwide hunt for the sixth day on Teusday to find a missing American journalist, Daniel Pearl, after an unknown group kidnapped him protesting the treatment of al Queda men being held by the US in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The group calling themselves The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, said in an email that their captive would receive better treatment if conditions at Camp X-Ray improved and Pakistani detainees were sent home.

hey request that the prisoners being held at the naval base be returned to Pakistan and face trial there, while all those held on suspicion only be allowed access to lawyers and to see family members.

The U.S. government moved quickly to place the prisoners off limits in any negotiations.

``We want to see Daniel Pearl reunited with his family as soon as possible,'' the National Security Council said in a statement on Wednesday night. ``Mr. Pearl is a journalist trying to do his job. We dismiss any attempt to link Mr. Pearl's abduction with the disposition of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.''

The email was sent using a Microsoft Hotmail account with the username, ``kidnapperguy,'' according to the New York Times, which was one of the recipients of the email.

Other recipients include the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, as well as media and government agencies in Pakistan, Britain and the United Arab Emirates.

The Wall Street Journal, for whom Pearl was South East Asia Bureau Chief, did not receive the email, but had it forwarded to them--so far, they are moving on the assumption that it is genuine. The Journal quoted it as saying that Mr. Pearl was being held ``in very inhuman circumstances - quite similar, in fact, to the way Pakistanis and nationals of other sovereign countries are being kept in Cuba by the American army.''

The email went on to say, ``If the Americans keep our countrymen in better conditions, than we will better the conditions of Mr. Pearl and all other Americans that we capture.''

The email also says that Mr. Pearl was posing as a journalist whose real identity was that of a CIA officer.

In Washington, CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher said that ``although we do not normally discuss such matters, Danny Pearl does not, and never has worked for the CIA.'' The Journal also denied that Pearl worked for the CIA.

Police in Karachi said the email was the first claim of responsibility for Pearl's disappearance. They said they had never heard of the group and believed the name in the email to be false.

Likewise, State Department spokeswoman Eliza Koch said; ``We have never heard of the group. We cannot verify the authenticity of the email, but remain concerned for the journalist's safety... Both our consulate in Karachi and embassy in Islamabad continue to coordinate with Pakistani authorities to resolve the case.''

Pearl, who was based in the Indian city of Mumbai, had been in Karachi to dig up information about Richard Reid, the alleged shoe bomber charged in the United States with trying to blow up an airliner last month, according to Paris-based press group, Reporters sans Frontiers.

He went missing after he left his hotel in Karachi telling his wife that he was going to interview the caretaker for a shrine he believed had connections with a group allied to the Al Queda.

The shrine is located in the eastern city of Lahore but the caretaker is believed to have traveled to Karachi to meet with Pearl, police sources said, adding that the caretaker had also disappeared and the investigators had found no clues about him so far. The Wall Street Journal sister paper, the Asian Wall Street Journal, appealed for Pearl's release on humanitarian grounds.