Threat forces U.N. to scale back in SW Pakistan

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The United Nations has scaled back operations temporarily in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province after receiving a threat from a separatist movement, a spokesman said Thursday.

The Baluch Liberation United Front (BLUF) warned Sunday, in a telephone to a Pakistani news agency office in the provincial capital of Quetta, that U.N. staff would be targeted unless they left Baluchistan.

BLUF spokesman Shahiq Baluch said the threat was made because of the failure to implement promises made to secure the release of a senior U.N. agency official last April.

John Solecki, head of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Baluchistan, was kidnapped on February 2 when gunmen ambushed his car and shot dead his driver.

He was freed after U.N. officials assured mediators that they would take steps to obtain the release of thousands of ethnic Baluchs either being held in custody or missing.

U.N. spokesman Janes Tisovszky said all U.N. operations in Baluchistan had been scaled back.

"Some offices have been closed down. Others are operating through their local operators, but for the time being we have been forced to scale back our operations," Tisovszky said.

Baluchistan is the largest but most thinly populated of Pakistan's four provinces. Separatists are fighting for greater autonomy and bigger share of income from its natural resources.

Pakistan accuses India and Afghanistan of helping the insurgents. India says it has nothing to hide on Baluchistan.

(Reporting by Kamran Haider and Gul Yousafzai in Quetta; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Sanjeev Miglani)