KARACHI, Feb. 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Pakistan was considering Wednesday U.S. requests to extradite British-born Sheikh Omar, the confessed mastermind of U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl's abduction.

Officials in Karachi said they were working on the legal formalities for extraditing Omar but were awaiting formal instructions and information from the federal government, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Washington has stepped up pressure for extradition on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who Tuesday, February 26, met with U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin and spoke by telephone with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.  

"The United States will continue to make its case to Pakistan. Pakistan has received the case well," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, before cautioning against expectations of an "instant resolution" to the situation.

No Pakistani official would say how Musharraf responded to the U.S. request, but one noted that Islamabad had agreed to extradition in the past.    

"Although there is no formal extradition treaty between the United States and Pakistan, there are two precedents when Pakistan extradited terrorists wanted by the United States," the official said, quoted by AFP.    

Pakistan extradited to the U.S. suspects in the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and outside the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters near Washington.    

Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider said Pakistan would consider a formal extradition request.    

"When they ask us officially, we will evaluate the situation. But between Pakistan and America is the U.K., whose national Sheikh Omar is," he told AFP in Bali, Indonesia, on the sidelines of a regional people-smuggling conference.    

British High Commission (embassy) spokesman Paul O'Neil said he did not know what Omar's nationality status is at present, nor whether he had sought consular assistance.    

"If he's a dual national, then any assistance we could give him would be limited in the country of his other nationality," he said.    

Asked whether Britain would object to Omar's extradition to the United States, where he could face the death penalty if found guilty of murder, O'Neil said, "This is a matter for the relevant U.K. authority."    

U.S. officials have said they believe a form of extradition treaty signed in 1931 by Washington and local authorities in what was then part of the British empire remains valid.    

Omar, who was born in 1973 in London, was Monday, February 25, ordered remanded in police custody for another two weeks as police seek evidence.    

He reportedly admitted in court February 14 he had masterminded the abduction of the Wall Street Journal correspondent who disappeared January 23. He also said that the reporter was dead, a claim confirmed a week later when a grisly video surfaced of Pearl's murder.    

The Pakistani news agency which received the video said Pearl was killed after he read a statement saying he was Jewish and that Muslims were being persecuted in several parts of the world.

Meanwhile, police are searching for at least seven suspects including Amjad Hussain Farooqi, who allegedly drove Pearl from a Karachi hotel on his way to meet a contact for his story.    

Ambassador Chamberlin Wednesday visited an investigation team in Karachi.