By Kathy Gannon, Karachi
A BRITISH-BORN militant with a history of kidnapping Westerners confessed yesterday to the abduction of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and, in a chilling declaration, told a Pakistani court he believes the journalisBut President Pervez Musharraf and Karachi police questioned his claim, and the Journal said it is confident Pearl is still alive.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh appeared in court for the first time yesterday. He gave no details on where or when the 38-year-old Wall Street Journal journalist was allegedly killed.

Just a day earlier, police said he had told them Pearl was still alive.

With his hands bound in thick steel chains and a dirty shawl draped over his head, Saeed shuffled into an anti- terrorist court surrounded by police in bulletproof vests gripping automatic rifles.

Twice Saeed struggled to remove the shawl from his head and twice police put it back on. Finally Judge Ershad Noor Khan agreed to have it removed.

"I don't want to defend this case. I did this," Saeed said in a soft voice, barely a whisper at times. "As far as I understand, he's dead."

Grim-faced and looking weary, Saeed told the court, "Right or wrong, I had my reasons. I think that our country shouldn't be catering to America's needs."

Saeed's unexpected statement came a day after Musharraf met President Bush in Washington to receive kudos for Pakistan's support in the war against terror.

Musharraf abandoned his longtime Taliban allies after the September 11 attacks in the United States and has moved to crack down on Muslim extremists who had long been tolerated and even supported by previous governments here.

Musharraf said his government does not believe Saeed's claims about Pearl's death because the suspect has been "saying something one day and another thing on the other day."

Pearl, the Wall Street Journal's South Asia bureau chief, had been investigating links between Pakistani militant groups and Richard Reid, the man alleged to have tried to detonate explosives in his sneakers during a Paris to Miami flight in December.