Islamabad, Pakistan ? After meeting with Pakistan’s president, the U.S. ambassador said Tuesday she is “not disappointed” with his response to American requests to hand over the key suspect in the death of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

But Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin said no decision has been made about whether Pakistan will deliver Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. The Bush administration said it wants to get its hands on the suspect, who already is facing an indictment in the United States in an earlier kidnapping.

Pakistan wants to hold on to Saeed for now  hoping he can help locate Pearl’s body and identify his killers, an Interior Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. Thus far, Saeed has not provided any help.

In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said it was made clear to President Pervez Musharraf during his meeting with Chamberlin that Washington wanted Saeed sent to the United States, but Musharraf acknowledged Pakistan’s rights in the case.

“A crime, a murder, was committed in their country, and they have their own ways and laws of dealing with it. It’s not atypical at a time like that, when another nation makes a request, for that request to be considered, and it takes time,” Fleischer said.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Musharraf telephoned Secretary of State Colin Powell after seeing Chamberlin. “We want to see him in U.S. custody for the crimes he has committed against Americans,” Boucher said of Saeed.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed a resolution expressing condolences to Pearl’s family.

Pakistani officials are still searching for at least four key suspects and Pearl’s body has not been found. How, when and where Pearl was killed are unknown.

Handing over Saeed could be complicated because there’s no clear extradition treaty between Pakistan and the United States and because Musharraf could face nationalist criticism if he surrenders Saeed for trial in a foreign country.

Saeed, 28, had been in custody for more than two weeks when a video confirming Pearl’s death was made public. U.S. officials say they had requested Saeed’s extradition two months before he was implicated in the Pearl murder.

Escorted by dozens of policemen toting AK-47 assault rifles, Saeed was taken to a court building Tuesday in the southern city of Karachi, where a witness in the Pearl case was asked to identify him, said Manzoor Mughal, a senior investigator.

During the closed-door proceeding in a judge’s chamber, Saeed was not able to see the witness, whose identify has not been revealed, Mughal said. Saeed arrived at the court in an eight-vehicle convoy. A hood made of white cloth covered his head and face. It was not immediately known if the witness made a positive identification.

A U.S. federal grand jury has secretly indicted Saeed in the 1994 kidnapping of four Westerners in India, including one American. The suspect spent five years in an Indian jail for that crime, but was freed as part of hostage-prisoner swap after Muslim militants hijacked an Indian airplane.

Pearl’s widow, Mariane, who is pregnant with the couple’s only child, said she would tell her unborn son that his father died a hero.

“I really … want to say to the people of Pakistan and to the law enforcement people to go on and find the people that killed Danny,” she said in Karachi, where her husband was kidnapped on Jan. 23.

“I am certainly convinced he knew that he was in front of people trained to kill him but also to spread terror in the world,” she said in an interview conducted by the BBC, which was made available to other news organizations as a pool report.