ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's government is set Tuesday to introduce a package of reforms in parliament in a bid to ease a separatist insurgency in Baluchistan on the Afghan and Iranian borders, a spokesman said.

"The Baluchistan Empowerment Package will be unveiled in the joint sitting of parliament today," Farhatullah Babar, spokesman for President Asif Ali Zardari, told AFP.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani discussed the salient features of package overnight with Zardari who expressed hope that it would "go a long way in redressing the grievances of the people of the province," Babar said.

"The package contains a series of constitutional reforms, economic measures and administrative steps to assuage the hurt feelings of the people of Baluchistan," Babar said.

Hundreds of people have died since Baluch insurgents rose up in 2004 demanding autonomy and a greater share of the profits from natural resources in the mineral-rich southwestern province.

Bomb explosions and drive-by shootings are fairly frequent in Baluchistan -- rife with Islamist militancy, sectarian violence and a regional insurgency.

Analysts, intelligence agents and foreign officials have widely reported that Taliban fighters use Baluchistan as a base, crossing over the border into Afghanistan to and from the militia's spiritual capital of Kandahar.