Pakistan Warns of Possible Attacks

Pakistan has warned U.S. and other foreign diplomatic missions and businesses to boost their security, fearing that the slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl may signal a wider plan to thwart President Pervez Musharraf’s drive against extremism.

Pakistani officials vowed to redouble efforts to arrest key suspects still at large. Those efforts include “maximum cooperation” with the FBI, which has been allowed to interview suspects already in custody, a Foreign Ministry official said Saturday.

“We cannot rule out attacks on U.S. interests in Pakistan after what has happened with Mr. Pearl. The way the kidnappers executed him shows they have made up their mind that they do not care about their own future,” an Interior Ministry official said.

Investigators have begun searching for an Arab national believed to be involved in the Pearl case and said they were reassessing whether the reporter’s kidnapping and killing were linked to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network.

“In the beginning, we had totally discounted the Al Qaeda factor in the case,” said a Pakistani source involved in the investigation. “But now we are certainly chasing leads that may take us to Al Qaeda’s doors.”

Pearl, 38, the Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, disappeared Jan. 23 in Karachi while researching a story about Islamic radicals in Pakistan.

Pearl had been cut in the chest and was probably already dead when Islamic extremists sliced his throat in front of a camera, according to an analysis of the videotape by U.S. law enforcement officials.

The 3 1/2-minute digital videotape delivered to authorities in Karachi included several different scenes that had been spliced together, according to the analysis.

Meanwhile, a Pakistani official said that the day before the videotape was received, three top Pakistani police officers received calls on Pearl’s mobile phone warning them to stop pursuing suspects in the case.

“They told the investigators how many children each one of them has, when they go to school, which mode of transport they use for going to school and returning back home and where their families go shopping,” the official said.