Hijackers’ Deadlines Pass as Talks Continue

Instead of following through on their threats to kill more passengers, Muslim extremists who commandeered an Indian Airlines jet continued talking today with a team of Indian negotiators hastily flown to Afghanistan.

Several deadlines set by the hijackers came and went without more killings, and there was no indication that progress had been made to resolve the crisis. The approximately 160 hostages entered their fifth day of captivity aboard the jet stuck on a runway in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.

Still, the passing of the deadlines and the beginning of the talks represented the most hopeful sign yet that the crisis that began Friday might be resolved without more bloodshed.

The arrival of the negotiators sent a clear signal that the Indian government was reversing its policy of refusing to talk to terrorists. The dispatching of an Indian plane to Kandahar late Monday followed angry demonstrations by relatives of the hostages, who stormed government offices in New Delhi to complain about inaction.

The Indian government also could be aiming to wear down the hijackers by engaging them in negotiations.

Early Monday, the hijackers threatened to start killing passengers two at a time until the Indian government released the Pakistani leader of a guerrilla group who is jailed in India.

The hijackers, who seized the plane Friday shortly after it left Katmandu, Nepal, already have stabbed to death one Indian citizen. The hijackers told airport authorities Monday that they had tied the hands and feet of two passengers and would kill them and throw their bodies out of the plane if the negotiators did not arrive.

The hijackers apparently changed their minds when members of the Taliban, the fundamentalist Islamic group that governs most of Afghanistan, surrounded the plane and threatened to kill the hijackers if they harmed the hostages. The deadlines came and went without incident.

“We warned the hijackers that if they take any action or kill anyone on our territory, we are going to mete out similar treatment to them,” Taliban spokesman Rehmatullah Aga said in Kandahar.

Negotiations between the Indian officials and the hijackers began late Monday when seven members of the Indian team entered the airport’s control tower. The flight from New Delhi also brought doctors, medical supplies, pilots and a crew.

Despite the renewed hopes for an end to the ordeal, the possibility remained that the Airbus craft would take off again.

Taliban officials had told the hijackers that they would force the plane to leave if a deal with India fell through. A damaged fuel tank apparently had rendered the plane unable to fly, and both the Taliban and the Indian government were providing mechanics to repair it.

“We will use force to make the plane leave,” said Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel, the Taliban foreign minister.

At the same time, Mutawakel warned the Indian government that time was running out.

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

Conditions continued to deteriorate for those held on the plane in the desert town. The jet sat on the runway with its shades down. Shortly after day broke, a single engine on the aircraft that had been running for three days was turned off for the first time, Reuters reported. The engine was thought to be providing ventilation.

The hijackers refused to allow anyone inside. Taliban soldiers who earlier delivered food to the door of the plane reported that the air inside was foul.

“It smells like people have been sick,” said Mohammed Khiber, a civil aviation authority spokesman.

The passengers on Flight 814 were mainly Indian but also included eight Nepalese, four Spaniards, four Swiss, two French nationals, an Italian, a Canadian, a Belgian, an American, an Australian and one Japanese man.

Indian officials said there were five hijackers armed with grenades, pistols and knives. The plane crisscrossed the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East before its stop in Kandahar. The hijackers have freed 28 passengers, mostly women and children.

The terrorists have demanded the release of Maulana Masood Azhar, a Muslim cleric arrested in 1994 in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir. His group, the Harkat Moujahedeen, is one of many fighting to expel the Indian government from Kashmir, but it is more ruthless than most.

In 1995, the organization kidnapped five Western hikers and tried to exchange them for Azhar’s freedom. One, a Norwegian, was found decapitated, and the other four are missing and believed dead. The U.S. government has deemed the group a terrorist organization. It is believed to have its training camps in Afghanistan.

As the hijacking wore on, criticism grew in many quarters that the Indian government was endangering the hostages by moving too slowly. The crisis has caught India in a diplomatic quandary. Like the U.S. and most other countries, it does not maintain diplomatic relations with the Taliban.

About 200 anguished relatives of hostages clashed with police in New Delhi as they demonstrated outside the prime minister’s residence demanding action.

“The prime minister is not giving us the truth,” said Amit Kakkar, the cousin of a hostage who was married to the one man killed on the flight. “We are in very bad shape, and we don’t know what is happening.”

Still, part of the Indian government’s strategy seemed to be to wear down the hijackers by neither granting nor refusing to grant their demands. Pramod Mahajan, a minister in India’s government, said Monday that there was no time frame to end the hijacking.

“Let them talk,” Mahajan said. “Then 1/8the negotiators 3/8 will come back. Then the government can respond.

“I am very optimistic we will get them back,” Mahajan said of the hostages. “But there is no timetable.”

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Special correspondent Rahimullah Yusufzai in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.