Threat forces UN to scale back in SW Pakistan

[Coventina]

Source: Reuters

ISLAMABAD, July 30 (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 on Thursday. The Baluch Liberation United Front (BLUF) warned on 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 Feb. 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.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUSISL533464._CH_.2400