Hijackers Ease Demands; India Offer Reported

The Islamic militants holding 160 hostages aboard a hijacked Indian Airlines jet dropped two key demands Wednesday but refused to budge any further amid reports today that Indian negotiators offered to free jailed guerrillas.

As the hostages awoke from a sixth night in captivity today, Western diplomats at the scene of the hijacking in Kandahar, Afghanistan, told Associated Press that Indian negotiators had offered to release some of the jailed Kashmiri guerrillas.

The diplomats said no deal had been struck, as the hijackers insisted that the Indians free 36 rebels.

“The Indian negotiators are talking to the hijackers about releasing some prisoners,” one of the diplomats told the news service.

Indian officials in New Delhi denied that any agreement had been reached to release hostages but would not comment on whether negotiators had offered to release any jailed guerrillas.

“There is no agreement,” said R.S. Jassal, a spokesman for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs.

That seemed to leave open the possibility that Indian negotiators were at least discussing the possibility of freeing some of the militants being held in Indian jails.

In a new development, Taliban troops in army fatigues took up positions around the plane in a possible attempt to intimidate the hijackers. But officials of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s fundamentalist Islamic government, denied that any action was imminent.

The five hijackers holding the Airbus A-300 on a runway told Indian negotiators that they were no longer seeking $200 million in ransom nor the disinterment of a fellow guerrilla buried in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Indian leaders, whose strategy seemed to be to wear down the hijackers while keeping the hostages alive, said they were unimpressed by the concession.

“It is a trial of patience,” Indian Information Minister Pramod Mahajan told reporters after a Cabinet meeting in New Delhi. “We don’t want it to be [drawn out], but we have to be prepared for it.”

The picture that emerged was of a three-way negotiation involving the Indians, the hijackers and the Taliban.

An Afghan official said the Taliban--a militant group shunned by most of the world’s governments--persuaded the hijackers to drop their demands for the $200 million and for their comrade’s body. Taliban officials told the hijackers that the demand for money was “un-Islamic” and that disinterring the body of the fallen guerrilla also would violate the tenets of their religion.

But troubling developments Wednesday seemed to threaten what little progress the negotiators had made. Officials with the Taliban said they might soon force the plane to take off.

“We cannot wait forever,” Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel said. “If the Indian side doesn’t peacefully solve the problem, our next step will be to ask the hijackers to immediately leave Afghanistan.

“If not, we will force them to leave.”

Mutawakel would not specify how his government would force the plane to take off--or when it might do so.

Improved conditions for the hostages emerged as the brightest news of the day. Several members of the Taliban entered the airplane and reported that the hostages seemed to be holding up well.

An Afghan man who was part of a cleaning crew allowed on board Wednesday said he saw hostages playing cards, reading newspapers and chatting--even laughing--among themselves. He said the passengers weren’t wearing blindfolds--as many had been forced to do in previous days.

Haji Rehmatullah, the Kandahar airport manager, who also boarded the plane, said he saw five masked hijackers carrying pistols and hand grenades. He said they spoke Urdu, the national language of Pakistan and a language spoken by many Indian Muslims.

The hijackers seized the plane Christmas Eve as it left Nepal and forced it to land in three countries before finally taking it to Kandahar. The terrorists are part of the struggle to oust the Indian government from the predominantly Muslim state of Jammu and Kashmir, where a savage guerrilla war has killed 25,000 people since 1989.

The 36 people the hijackers want released are Pakistani cleric Maulana Masood Azhar and 35 other suspected militants in the Kashmiri cause. Azhar is a leader of Harkat Ansar, now known as Harkat Moujahedeen, which the U.S. government has labeled a terrorist organization.