WASHINGTON, Nov 14: The US State Department has said that American aid agencies were moving their operations from NWFP to Islamabad after the assassination of a USAID worker in Peshawar earlier this week.

The department’s deputy spokesman Robert Wood identified the USAID contractor killed in Peshawar as Stephen D. Vance who worked for the Cooperative Housing Foundation, which is based in Silver Spring, Maryland.

“There’s an investigation under way. And we want to bring the culprits to justice,” he said.

About US non-governmental organisations moving their operations from the NWFP to Islamabad, he said: “I’ve heard that a number of them are planning to do so”.

The State Department official also indicated that the US administration backed this move.

“The security situation in that region is, you know, very difficult,” he said.

“People need to be aware of it and take necessary precautions to protect their institutions and their people.”

Mr Wood said the US government also had asked its staff based in Pakistan to limit their movements as best as they could and basically to confine themselves to their mission activities.

He agreed with a journalist who suggested that moving US personnel out of the NWFP would adversely affect Washington’s efforts to encourage development works in that province.

“You’re right; it does complicate our efforts to try to bring development assistance and other types of activities to the people,” he said. “But we’ll continue to work on it.”

Mr Wood said the Pakistanis were also aware of this situation “more than any of us” and the US government would continue to work with them to provide adequate security for its personnel and for other expatriates working in the country.

He said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discussed the situation in the region when she met President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in New York this week.

She also talked to them about the war against extremism and about “how we can better provide security in the region; how we can cooperate better on these issues”.