WASHINGTON - President Bush said the United States is "interested in dealing with" the Islamic extremist implicated in the slaying of American journalist Daniel Pearl, but expressed confidence yesterday that Pakistan is doing enough to round up Pearl's killers.

Bush told reporters that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf assured him in a phone call last week that Pakistan would "chase down the killers and bring them to justice."

"I could tell from the tone of his voice how distraught he was, how disturbed he was, that this barbaric act had taken place in his country," Bush said. "He knew full well that those killers did not represent the vast, vast majority of the people in his own country."

When asked whether the United States hopes to extradite Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who is being held as a suspect in the Pearl case, Bush said: "Yes, we're always interested in dealing with people who have harmed American citizens."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer put it more bluntly, saying the United States "would very much like to get its hands on" Saeed and made clear to Pakistan "that the United States would be interested in having the sheikh sent here."

Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, the senior U.S. official in Pakistan, said yesterday that the U.S. government wanted Saeed extradited from Pakistan at least two months before he was implicated in the killing of Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter. She said she would raise the issue anew when she meets with Musharraf today.

Saeed "is a nasty character," Chamberlin said on CBS' "The Early Show." "He's been involved as a suspect in kidnappings and crimes against American citizens for many years."

Asked whether Saeed could be extradited without destabilizing Musharraf's government, Chamberlin replied: "I think the Pakistani people and the Pakistani government are equally outraged by the brutality of the murder of Danny Pearl."

Word of the administration's diplomatic moves emerged after Newsweek magazine reported that Saeed was secretly indicted last year by a federal grand jury for a foiled 1994 kidnapping.

The charges brought in Washington involved four Western tourists in India, the magazine said. One of the four was an American.

Taken into custody Feb. 5 in the Pearl case, Saeed told interrogators that his group wanted to teach the United States a lesson and Pearl's murder was just a first step, intelligence officials said in Pakistan.

In the abduction eight years ago, Indian authorities found the victims and imprisoned Saeed and his accomplices, who had been seeking freedom for Islamic extremists. Saeed's supporters won his release by hijacking an Indian airliner in 1999 and stabbing a passenger to death.

Justice Department officials pressed the National Security Council about extraditing Saeed to the United States, an administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press Sunday. Chamberlin said she raised the subject of extraditing Saeed in late November or early December with the country's foreign minister.

Pearl was kidnapped on Jan. 23. The next day, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Chamberlin discussed Saeed at a previously scheduled meeting with the Pakistani president. But at that point there was no link between Pearl's kidnapping and Saeed, the official said. Mueller and Chamberlin asked that Pakistan "provide all assistance" in getting Pearl released.

The United States and Pakistan do not have an extradition treaty.

Sen. Richard Shelby, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said such a treaty should be a priority. Shelby, R-Ala., also said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition" that Pakistan might bring the killers to justice there, but "if they're not going to do the job," other steps could be necessary.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said bringing Saeed and others to the United States to stand trial is a possibility.

"The United States government may very well want to try to extradite the people involved if possible for the killing of an American, which would seem to me as a non-lawyer to be a reasonable thing," Rumsfeld said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Rumsfeld said it would be up to Bush to decide whether anyone brought here for Pearl's killing would be tried by a military tribunal rather than in a civilian court.