Pakistan urged to help find missing reporter

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- A group that supports press freedom has expressed "deep concern" to the Pakistani government over the disappearance last week of a Wall Street Journal reporter.

"We ask the Pakistani government to do everything in their power to help the progress of the investigation as quickly as possible," said Robert Menard, general secretary of Reporters Without Borders.

Daniel Pearl, 38, has been missing since Wednesday, when he failed to check in with his bureau, newspaper publisher Dow Jones and Co. said Friday.

The group said he was staying for three weeks in Karachi, where he was investigating Richard Reid, who is accused of carrying explosives in his shoes aboard a trans-Atlantic flight last month.

According to the local police, Pearl wanted to interview political and religious leaders, the group said in a statement Friday.

The Pakistani government has asked the governor and the police of Sindh province to launch a manhunt, said the group, which has asked to be informed of progress in the investigation.

Pearl, the newspaper's South Asia bureau chief, joined The Wall Street Journal in 1990 and has been based in India since December, 2000. He was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and graduated from Stanford University.

His disappearance follows the apparent abduction in Karachi on Tuesday of Ghulam Hasnain, a Pakistani reporter working for Time magazine. Reporters Without Borders said Hasnain arrived home Thursday, but he has declined to comment on what happened to him.