Free 35 more militants: hijackers
Demand $ 200 million
Tribune News Service and agencies

NEW DELHI, Dec 28 — For the first time since the hijack crisis began, the hijackers detailed their demands — the release of 35 more hardcore militants from Indian jails and $ 200 million as the price for freeing the more than 150 passengers hostage on board the Indian Airlines plane.

The External Affairs Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh told the media after an informal meeting of the Union Cabinet here that the demand for the release of the militants was in addition to that for Maulana Masood Azhar, the Pakistani cleric arrested by Indian security forces in 1994.

This is the first time that the sky-pirates, who hijacked the Kathmandu-Delhi flight on Friday, have conveyed the demand.

Mr Jaswant Singh said the hijackers had also demanded that the body of Harkat-ul-Ansar chief in Jammu and Kashmir Sajjad Afghani be exhumed and his coffin handed over to them.

The External Affairs Minister said India would send an appropriate response through its seven-member negotiating team which reached Kandahar yesterday.

“Let the international community and the nation understand the demands”, Mr Jaswant Singh said.

The demand was conveyed in writing and the paper dropped from the aircraft. The hijackers have also furnished the names of the militants whose release they are seeking.

Afghani, who was arrested along with Azhar in February 1994, was killed when Pakistani mercenaries made an abortive bid to escape from Kotbalwal jail in Jammu.

Asked if the government was considering some military action to overpower the hijackers, Mr Singh said he could not discuss matters “of strategy and tactics”.

Asked if he was satisfied with the progress of the talks, Mr Singh said “I cannot express even that”. He also evaded a question about how soon the government was hoping for a breakthrough.

With this upping of the ante by the hijackers the chances of a breakthrough receded despite three rounds of negotiations with Indian officials who had been rushed to Afghanistan late yesterday evening.

Although the hijackers — four Pakistanis, one Afghan and one Nepalese — allowed the plane to be cleaned and passengers be given food and other medical help, they refused to free the remaining women and children on board. There are still two children and 46 women on board.

India also continued diplomatic efforts to end the hostage crisis.

Diplomats of Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Belgium, France, Canada and Australia are stationed at Kandahar to see that the hostage drama ends at the earliest.

Meanwhile, Civil Aviation Secretary Ravindra Gupta said the hijackers had not set any deadline for meeting their fresh demands. He also said that engineers had set right the auxillary power unit of the hijacked aircraft, which now was functioning properly.

In another development, two Indian doctors today examined some passengers on board the hijacked plane this afternoon after the hijackers permitted them to do so.

The doctors had since come out of the plane after examining the passengers who were said to be “requiring medical help” due to their continuing incarceration in the plane since December 24, official sources said late tonight.

The relief team, including doctors, were stationed in the A-320 aircraft which flew from New Delhi yesterday, carrying emergency supplies, including medicines and spare parts for the hijacked plane.

Though the Taliban authorities offered hotel accommodation to the team, it turned down the offer on grounds that they wanted to be close to the hostages, sources said.

The IA team of engineers and additional crew members, also part of the relief team, is being led by airline’s Deputy Managing Director Capt J.R.D. Rao.

The hijackers however, turned down the request of Indian aircraft engineers to enter the hijacked A-300 and rectify some snags, according to an ATC official at Kandahar airport.

They refused to allow engineers inside the plane and asked them to carry out repairs from outside, the ATC official told PTI over satellite phone from the airport in the Afghan city.

A news agency quoting Taliban officials said the hijackers were apparently angry that guards from Afghanistan’s ruling militia had surrounded the plane. Taliban guards had surrounded the plane yesterday after the hijackers warned that they would start killing passengers if their demands were not met within a deadline.