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ISLAMABAD-Pakistani police are investigating a purported separatist group's claim to be holding a kidnapped American U.N. worker, an officer said Sunday, a day after Islamist militants close to the Afghan border said they had killed a Polish geologist.Pakistan has seen a rash of kidnappings and attacks on foreigners in recent months, mostly blamed on Al Qaeda and Taliban militants seeking to destabilize the secular government and punish it for supporting the U.S.-led war in neighboring Afghanistan.American John Solecki was seized last Monday in Quetta in the southern Pakistan province of Baluchistan as he drove to work at the offices of the U.N. refugee agency there.Quetta's chief investigator Wazir Khan Nasir said a previously unknown ethnic Baluch separatist group called the Baluchistan Liberation United Front telephoned a local journalist Saturday to claim responsibility.He did not say what the group's demands were."We are vigorously looking into the matter,"Nasir told the AP. Pakistan-based Online International News Network quoted a spokesman for the front as saying Solecki was kidnapped to highlight the Baluch campaign for independence.The group has demanded the release of 141 Baluch women allegedly detained by Pakistani authorities and that the U.N. "solve the issue of Baluchistan under the Geneva Convention," he said.He said it was the front's first kidnapping but warned of others if the demands were not met.The natural-gas-rich region is home to a decades long insurgency, but foreigners had never been targeted previously...By AP
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