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Pakistan has said it has launched a manhunt to apprehend four more accomplices in the gruesome killing of US journalist Daniel Pearl who was beheaded by his abductors even as Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf discussed a joint strategy with US President George W Bush to nab the culprits.
"We've got the main, the prime accused in this case in our hands, we have got three of his accomplices in hand, four more people who abducted him and kept him in an underground cell are to be caught," Pakistan Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider said.
Haider said a vigorous manhunt has been launched to apprehend the four, whose identities he declined to provide.
The other four were in addition to four militants, including the self confessed suspect, Sheikh Omar Saeed, who are currently in police custody in Karachi.
Meanwhile, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf said Pearl's killers had defamed Pakistan and Islam and vowed to 'liquidate' terrorists from his country.
"Pearl's murder has not defamed Pakistan but also the religion of Islam," Musharraf told PTV in Islamabad on Friday night, adding "Nothing can malign Islam than a person who calls himself Muslim and claims his link with an Islamic organisation and then commits murder."
"I think our resolve increases with such acts to move more strongly against all such terrorists and those organisations that perpetrate such terrorism and liquidate them entirely from the country," he said.
"The Government will make all efforts to arrest the remaining culprits and give them the harshest punishment to teach a less on to those involved in terrorist acts in the country," he said.
Assuring the international community that he and his government will strive hard to eliminate terrorism from Pakistan, he said, "If any one thinks he and his organisation will stray from the course, then these elements are mistaken," he said.
Earlier in a statement, he said the murder of Pearl would not deter him from carrying on with his crackdown against terrorists in Pakistan and assured that his campaign against terrorism would stay on course to rid of the country of the menace.
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