John Solecki was found on Saturday abandoned in a village 50km south of Quetta near the Afghan border in western Pakistan after his captors called a news agency to tell them where to look, officials said.

Owner of a restaurant alongside the main Quetta to Karachi highway, Mohammed Anwar, said he found Mr Solecki in the dirt near a wall after hearing a voice saying, ''Help me, help me'', in English.

Mr Solecki made no public comment and police and United Nations officials declined to discuss what led to his release.

UN spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis said that UN officials who met Mr Solecki reported he was, ''tired but all right''.

Mr Solecki, who headed the UN refugee agency's operations in Quetta, would be reunited with his family, ''as soon as possible,'' she said.

Mr Solecki's release was a rare piece of good news amid intensifying violence in Pakistan that has raised international alarm over the nuclear-armed country's stability.

On Saturday, a suicide bomber attacked a paramilitary base in Islamabad, killing eight.

Mr Solecki's abduction and the killing of his driver on February 2 in Quetta raised concerns that he was another victim in a spate of attacks on foreigners blamed on Islamist militants.

A previously unknown group, the Baluchistan Liberation United Front, had claimed responsibility for the abduction, threatening to behead Mr Solecki and issuing a grainy video of him blindfolded, pleading for help.

But the group's name and its demands indicated they were ethnic Baluch separatists who have been waging a long low-level insurgency in the impoverished but oil-rich southwest of Pakistan, and have no record of taking or killing Western hostages.

The kidnappers had demanded the release of hundreds of people from alleged detention by Pakistani security agencies. AP