Kidnappers Say U.S. Hostage In Pakistan Alive

Solecki, head of the United Nation`s High Commissioner for Refugees in Baluchistan province, was abducted on Feb. 2 by gunmen.

John Solecki, an American kidnapped in Pakistan while working for a U.N. refugee agency, was still alive, a spokesman for the separatist group holding him said on Monday after media reports that he had been killed.

Pakistani television channels had run a headline saying the Press Club in the southwestern city of Quetta had received an anonymous telephone call saying Solecki had been killed and his body would be left in a couple of hours.

A spokesman for the previously unheard of Baluchistan Liberation United Front (BLUF) later telephoned a Pakistani news agency office in Quetta to deny any call had been made from the group, and to confirm that Solecki was alive.

"He is alive," a spokesman, Shahak Baluch, said in a call to Online news agency. "We have not made any call."

Solecki, head of the United Nation's High Commissioner for Refugees in Baluchistan province, was abducted on Feb. 2 by gunmen who ambushed his car and shot dead his driver in the provincial capital, Quetta.