Arms Came Aborad in Iran, Ex-Hostages Say : Algerians, Terrorists Confer Aboard Plane

Officials of the Algerian government boarded a hijacked Kuwait Airways jumbo jet three times Wednesday to talk in secret with the terrorists who control it and to try to negotiate an end to the nine-day ordeal that has cost the lives of two passengers so far.

With no result evident from the talks, hopes were dampened that an agreement had been worked out with the hijackers, who are thought to be Lebanese Shia Muslims.

The secrecy, however, eased some of the sense of fear and crisis, at least outside the plane. No more death threats could be heard in public, because the hijackers no longer were making their demands by radio to the airport control tower.

After talking with the hijackers, the Algerian officials conferred with Kuwaiti officials who had flown to Algiers on Wednesday afternoon. Asked whether Kuwait was now ready to free any of the 17 Shia prisoners whose release has been demanded by the hijackers, Kuwaiti Deputy Foreign Minister Saud Osaimi replied, “We are a nation of laws, and we will remain a nation of laws.”

Three crewmen and 29 passengers, including three members of Kuwait’s ruling Sabah family, remained on board as hostages after 12 passengers were freed in Larnaca, Cyprus, on Tuesday night.

It had been widely reported from Cyprus that a deal had been reached in which the terrorists would release the remaining hostages in Algiers, presumably in return for their own freedom. In fact, Cypriot Interior Minister Khristodoulous Veniamin told reporters at Larnaca on Tuesday night, “We were assured they would be freed in Algeria.”

However, the hijackers, in a statement read from the cockpit before the plane took off for Algiers, vowed to “continue our journey until our demands for the release of the 17 in Kuwait (are met).” Soon after the plane landed in Algiers, it was evident that if any deal had been worked out in Cyprus, it was not going to be implemented swiftly in Algiers.

Late Wednesday, the state-run Radio Algiers said negotiators had made progress in talks with the hijackers and a peaceful solution might be imminent, Reuters news service reported. The radio quoted what it called “well-informed sources close to the negotiations” but did not indicate the nature of the progress.

In some ways, the enormous blue and white jet, the largest plane parked on the apron of the busy Algiers airport, was an incongruous sight. Despite the terror inside, the plane glinted peacefully in the glaring sunlight while service and security vehicles moved back and forth before it as though nothing were wrong.

Only the presence of small armored cars, surrounding the plane at a discreet distance, betrayed the fact that something was seriously amiss.

Hadi Khediri, the Algerian interior minister, boarded the plane Wednesday morning. It was the first time that the hijackers, who seized the plane April 5 on a flight from Bangkok to Kuwait and diverted it to Mashhad in northeastern Iran, had allowed anyone to set foot on the craft.

Khediri told reporters later that there were 32 hostages aboard the plane and that he had seen five or six hijackers. He said Algerian officials would talk further with the gunmen after conferring with the Kuwaiti officials.

Meanwhile, a delegation of Kuwaitis arrived in a small Kuwaiti government jet after noon Wednesday. Its leader, Deputy Foreign Minister Osaimi, told reporters, “I hope that this is the last stage of the voyage.”

Throughout the day, the Kuwaitis met with Algerian officials in the VIP chalet at the airport.

Two Algerian officials, who were not identified, boarded the plane separately on two other occasions later in the day. They said nothing to reporters after they returned.

The dialogue between the hijackers in the plane and the control tower had none of the terrifying drama of the day before in Larnaca, where the hijackers announced that they had renamed the jet the “Plane of the Great Martyrs” and had decided “to put on our death shrouds under our clothes.”

“Either our 17 brothers are returned to us,” they said at the time, “or we shall join the ghosts in heaven.”

On Wednesday, however, the cockpit talk dealt mostly with requests for food and drink and for workers to stand by to pick up bags of garbage that were dropped from the front door of the plane.

The arrival of the Kuwaiti flight in Algiers drew Algeria once more into the turmoil of a hijacking. In July, 1985, Algeria became involved in a 16-day hijacking when officials arranged for the release here of some of the passengers on commandeered TWA Flight 847 before that plane was flown on to Beirut.

To back up their demands for fuel to fly them to Algeria, the hijackers of the Kuwaiti plane executed two Kuwaiti passengers in Larnaca and dumped their bodies on the airfield tarmac. The Cypriot government at first refused to supply the fuel but did so after the hijackers released 12 passengers and, according to the Cypriots, assured them that they would release the others in Algiers.

Algeria accepted the landing of the Kuwaiti jet only after two personal appeals by the emir of Kuwait, Sheik Sabah al Ahmed al Sabah, to Algerian President Chadli Bendjedid, Algeria’s envoy to the United States said Wednesday in Washington.

Ambassador Hocine Djoudi said in an interview that the Algerian government agreed to the landing on condition that the hijackers pledge not to kill any more passengers. Djoudi said the Algerian interior minister confirmed to him that the hostages remaining on the jumbo jet were in “relatively good condition.”

Times staff writer Don Shannon contributed to this story from Washington.