Indian team begins talks with hijackers

KANDAHAR, Dec 27 (AFP) — Indian negotiators began talks with hijackers holding 154 passengers and crew hostage on an Indian Airlines plane at Kandahar airport in Afghanistan, an AFP reporter at the scene saw.

Earlier, the team had begun talks with the Taliban, an official said.

The official said Afghan Civil Aviation Minister Maulana Abdul Mansoor was also part of the Taliban delegation. UN Coordinator Eric De Mul has been requested by the Taliban authorities to be present at the talks.

“The special Indian aircraft carrying the negotiating team and relief material landed at Kandahar airport this evening,” the official said, when contacted over satellite phone.

The official said the special aircraft had been parked at the other end of the tarmac where the hijacked plane was currently stationed. The relief aircraft was surrounded by heavily armed Taliban militiamen.

The ATC official said the Indian negotiating team after their talks with Taliban officials would open formal negotiations with the hijackers.

After adopting a wait and watch policy since Friday’s hijacking of the Kathmandu-Delhi flight, the government got into action and sent the commercial counsellor from the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, Mr A.R.Ghanshyam, to Kandahar early this morning to establish the first direct contact with the hijackers.

The government also initiated consultations with other political parties to decide on how to respond to the hijackers’ demand to free jailed Pakistani terrorist Maulana Masood Azhar and some others.

After the Opposition parties, including the Congress, the CPM and the Samajwadi Party told the government to keep the safety of the hostages and overall national interest in mind while taking a decision, External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh announced that it was sending a high-level negotiating team to Kandahar to establish “direct contact” with the hijackers to know their demands first hand.

Mr Ghanshyam made radio contact with the hijackers but the details of the conversation were not known.

Earlier in the day, UN official Erik De Mul announced that the hijackers had set a deadline of 1.40 pm for the Indian Government to meet their demand, failing which they would start killing the hostages. The deadline was later extended by three hours.

According to the pilot of the plane D.Sharan, the mental and physical condition of the passengers was “bad”, Mr De Mul said. The hijackers told the UN official that the world should put pressure on India to solve the Kashmir issue.

Alarmed by the hijackers’ threat to start killing the hostages, the government rushed the high-level negotiating team led by Mr Vivek Katju, Joint Secretary in the External Affairs Ministry, and comprising senior officials from the Home and External Affairs Ministries and the Cabinet Secretariat.

An Indian Airlines Airbus 320 left here with the negotiating team, three co-pilots, 10 cabin members, seven flight engineers and technicians besides two doctors and a nurse.

Meanwhile, thanks to over 48 hours of diplomatic efforts, the government is now hopeful of resolving the crisis and bringing back the hostages home.

While Mr Jaswant Singh personally spoke to his counterparts in 15 countries, the Indian High Commission in Islamabad was also active establishing contacts with the Taliban leaders.

Sources said it was today that a contact was established with the key Taliban leader, Mullah Umar, who is based in Kandahar.

The main objective behind the diplomatic exercise was to bring around the Taliban leaders so that proper atmosphere for negotiations with the hijackers could be created.

The success of the diplomatic exercise can be gauged with the statements emanating from all major international capitals which have squarely condemned the incident.

The External Affairs Minister spoke to the Foreign Ministers of the USA, Russia, France, Australia, Bangladesh, Spain, Iran, Belgium, Italy and some others countries. Only after he had spoken to his counterparts in these countries that an international pressure started coming on the Taliban leaders, the sources said.

Earlier, tension mounted at Kandahar as a second deadline set by the hijackers passed, a report from Islamabad said.

No fresh deadline had been given, it quoted officials as saying.

The hijackers threatened to start executing hostages if their demand for the release of their leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, was not met by 1.40 pm.

The deadline was later extended by three hours, the report said.

Another report said the hijackers had promised to set no more deadlines for negotiations.

A private Pakistan-based news agency said the hijackers would set no more deadlines.

Earlier, the Afghan Taliban Foreign Minister, Mr Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, said time was running out for India to resolve the crisis.

“India should not delay negotiations to resolve the crisis. It could cause damage and loss of life,” he had told reporters at Kandahar airport.

“Any delay in this emergency is not advisable,” he said.

He was talking just before the Indian team landed in Kandahar.

“The Taliban are still patient. Afghanistan is already a victim of propaganda. We condemn all terrorism and we do not want to get involved or be blamed by anyone over the incident,” he said. “India holds the key to a solution of the crisis. We leave it to India and the United Nations.”

The Taliban said the arrival of the Indian team might help end the four-day ordeal.

“It is good that the Indians have arrived now they can take over the talks directly. Food, water and medicines are regularly served to the plane,” Taliban spokesman Haroon Rashid said when contacted by satellite phone from Kandahar.

“The deadline is over but so far no one has been apparently killed... They had given a three-hour deadline to the Indian authorities to take concrete steps otherwise they would kill the hostages,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Indian Government tonight hailed the stand of the Taliban that its forces would storm the hijacked plane if the hijackers would start killing passengers.

Hailing Taliban’s stand, the Indian Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Mr Pramod Mahajan, said this assurance was enough for our people to known that the passengers were safe.

After the meeting of the Union Cabinet this evening, Mr Mahajan, while briefing newspersons said the government’s priority while resolving the crisis was two fold. First was to secure the release of passengers and other was to ensure that no one played around with the country’s security.

Incidentally, the plane carrying the relief team had to abort the trip when the aircraft carried technical snag and finally left Indira Gandhi International Airport at 4.39 p.m., Civil Aviation Ministry sources said.

The plane is carrying a relief team of over 50 persons including commercial and engineering staff. The plane is also carrying food, water and medicines although some relatives of the passengers in the hijacked plane later protested over not being told of the operation. They contended that specific medicines needed by their people on board could have been sent.

Meanwhile, highly-placed government sources today squarely blamed Pakistan’s ISI for the hijacking and said that there were six hijackers, of whom four were Pakistanis, one Afghani and one Nepalese.

The sources said the Taliban appeared to have no role in the hijacking and had in fact warned the hijackers that they would storm the plane if even a single passenger was harmed.

According to reports from Kandahar, six trucks of armed Taliban soldiers had surrounded the plane minutes before the deadline was to end. However, no activity was seen on the commandeered airbus.

In the Capital, relatives of the hostages, agitated by reports of the death threats, again tried to meet Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and stormed the venue where the crisis management group meeting was under way.