Islamabad vows to arrest hijackers if they enter Pakistan

January 2, 2000
Web posted at: 8:36 a.m. HKT (0036 GMT)

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From staff and wire reports

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistani Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider said Saturday that Pakistan would arrest and try the hijackers of an Indian airliner if they entered the country.

Haider, quoted by the official APP news agency, said that "under no circumstances would these persons be allowed to enter Pakistan."

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The Pakistani official was responding to a statement from Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, who said the hijackers and three freed militants had headed for the southwestern Pakistani town of Quetta after driving out of the southern Afghan town of Kandahar.

The hijackers on Friday released 155 hostages on an Indian Airlines plane after India freed a Pakistani Muslim cleric and two Kashmiri separatists from prison. The hijackers seized the aircraft eight days ago and forced it to fly to Kandahar. The group took a Taliban official with them as a hostage, but released him later.

The hijackers and militants sped off from the Kandahar airport in four-wheel-drive vehicles, and Afghan officials gave them 10 hours to leave the country, according to Singh.

"Pakistan is on high alert," APP quoted Haider as saying, "and in case they enter Pakistan territory they will be apprehended and tried as per established international rules and conventions to which Pakistan is signatory."

"In case they sneak into NWFP (North West Frontier Province) and Baluchistan province (both bordering Afghanistan), they will be detained and tried according to law and rules."

Nationality of hijackers disputed

Singh had also told a New Delhi news conference earlier Friday that India's initial inquiries had revealed that the hijackers were Pakistani nationals.

A Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman dismissed the claim and said: "Leveling of baseless and false accusations against Pakistan is part...of Indian tactics."

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, who brokered the deal between the hijackers and the Indian government, said earlier Saturday that the hijackers and the militants had left the country. Taliban spokesman Rehnatullah Aga said he did not know their destination.

But the only likely possibility was that the group drove for several hours to the border with Pakistan, where there are countless places to cross the frontier on foot.

"Those people are no more in Afghanistan," a Pakistan-based Afghan news service quoted a Taliban official as saying.

New Delhi, responding to criticism at home for giving in to the militants, said the hijackers had rigged the aircraft to explode if their demands were not met.

"The airplane had indeed been readied for exploding along with the passengers and crew ... sufficient explosives for that purpose was on the plane," Singh said.

The December 24 hijacking of the Indian Airbus-300 during a flight from Katmandu to New Delhi sparked a war of words between archrivals India and Pakistan.

New Delhi voiced suspicions that the hijacking had been sponsored by Pakistani intelligence agencies. Islamabad in turn said the incident appeared to be the work of India's Research and Analysis Wing intelligence agency to defame Pakistan.

The two countries have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over the disputed Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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