RAWALPINDI, March 5: An anti-terrorism court (ATC) holding a closed-door trial of the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto gave two more weeks to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Saturday to arrest and produce former president Pervez Musharraf, a legal source said.

But the FIA told the court, hearing the case inside Adiyala Jail near Rawalpindi, that the warrants issued by it had not been executed and sought another month to do the job, the source said.

However, the source said, special judge of ATC-III, Rana Nisar Ahmed, directed an FIA joint investigation team to submit the execution report on the arrest warrants or produce the accused (Musharraf) during the next hearing on March 19.

An FIA official informed the trial court that the investigation team had written a letter to the interior ministry requesting for execution of the warrants through the foreign affairs ministry. But there was no immediate official word about the fate of the FIA request.

Sharing details of the court proceedings with reporters after Saturday's hearing, advocate Malik Rafiq Ahmed, who is representing a former Rawalpindi city police officer and an accused in the case, Saud Aziz, said the FIA wanted one month for compliance of the court order but the judge gave them only two weeks.

The lawyer expressed doubts over the FIA efforts about arresting the former president and said had the interior ministry written a letter to foreign ministry as requested, the FIA investigators would have produced the document before the court.

On Feb 19 the court issued arrest warrants for the former president citing his London address after the FIA included him in the list of the accused and declared him an absconder. The investigators had based their conclusion about an alleged role of Gen Musharraf in the assassination case on the basis of statements of a former Intelligence Bureau chief, Ijaz Shah, and former interior ministry spokesman, Brig (retd) Javaid Iqbal Cheema.

The FIA says that Gen Musharraf had failed to provide security to Ms Bhutto and had instead threatened her. It has also cited an emergency news conference of the interior ministry spokesman soon after the murder accusing the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan for the act as evidence to influence the subsequent investigations by the police.

On Saturday, the trial court also deferred a formal indictment of seven arrested accused in the case --- former CPO Saud Aziz, former SP Khurram Shahzad, Aitzaz Sherazi, Sher Zaman, Abdul Rasheed, Hasnain Gul and Rafaqat Hussain --- in the absence of prosecution lawyers.

Meanwhile, advocates Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali and Mohammad Azhar Chaudhry, the special public prosecutors, moved an application before the ATC against the Adiyala Jail authorities for not allowing them to enter the jail premises for the court proceedings.

The court issued notices to the jail's superintendent and assistant superintendent asking them to respond to the application by the next hearing.

The lawyers accused assistant superintendent Mohammad Iqbal of not allowing them to enter the jail building to attend the proceedings in the cases of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the Mumbai attacks.

They said the jail authorities had obstructed the court proceedings at the behest of two accused police officers, Saud Aziz and Khurram Shahzad, to extend undue favour to them in the case of Ms Bhutto's murder.

Separately, the ATC judge put off arguments on two different applications in the case of the Mumbai attacks in the absence of FIA lawyers.

The FIA has asked the court to declare Ajmal Kasab, who has been sentenced to death by an Indian court, as a proclaimed offender in the case being heard here, and the lawyers representing the seven arrested accused, including alleged mastermind Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, have moved an application for dropping the proceedings against Kasab because of his conviction in India.