Ejaz Haider, an editor with Pakistan's respected Friday Times weekly, was detained in the U.S. when he visited immigration agents to register himself, sparking widespread outrage. Haider is also a visiting research scholar at the Brookings Institution, one of the U.S. capital's most prominent think tanks, the Washington Post reported. The daily quoted the U.S. Justice Department as saying that Haider had missed a deadline to check in with the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS).

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's brother Shahbaz is in the U.S., fuelling speculation here that the family is all set to end its exile in Saudi Arabia and return to Pakistan. According to reports here, Shahbaz Sharif landed in the U.S. Wednesday apparently for treatment of a backbone problem. This is the first time in two years that a high profile political member of the Sharif family has been allowed to go out of Saudi Arabia. The family has been living there in exile from December 2000.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has outright rejected Pakistan's plea for exemption of its citizens from new immigration rules applied to 24 mainly Muslim countries suspected of harbouring terrorists. Powell told newsmen that the Bush administration was "sensitive" to Pakistani concerns about the new immigration rules, but Islamabad would not be exempted. He was speaking at a press conference after a 40-minute meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri here Wednesday. Powell said he assured Kasuri that it was not a punitive measure against Pakistanis or Muslims

The U.S. is looking at various ways to help in resumption of dialogue between India and Pakistan, said Secretary of State Colin Powell. "I think we have to find a way to get the dialogue begun. Some suggestions have been made that perhaps some economic moves from one side to the other might be a way to jumpstart it," said Powell here Wednesday.

Muslim militants continue to slip into Kashmir despite Pakistani pledges to reduce infiltration, making it harder to ease tensions between the adversaries, a U.S. official said on Thursday. The official, who asked not to be named, said Pakistan had reduced infiltration last summer but the numbers had since gone up, perhaps because Pakistan was disappointed its efforts had not triggered a positive reaction from India

The Bush administration is likely to write off Pakistan's one billion dollar loan by early February, Dawn quoted Prime Minister Jamali's adviser on finance Shaukat Aziz as saying here on Wednesday. "The House Sub Appropriation Committee of the United States is meeting next week or the week after to write off one billion dollar loan out of 3 billion dollar loan owed by Pakistan," he stated. Speaking at a news conference here after his return from Davos (Switzerland), where he had gone to attend the World Economic Forum meeting, Shaukat Aziz said that United States Acting Secretary of Treasury Kenneth Dam told him that the House appropriation committee was about to write off one billion dollar loan to help ease Pakistan's external debt burden.