Indian defence minister alleges Taleban role in Christmas hijacking

Monday, January 24 11:17 PM SGT

NEW DELHI, Jan 24 (AFP) - Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes Monday accused Afghanistan's Taliban regime of involvement in the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane.

He said Afghan authorities had links with both the hijackers and Pakistan, whom India has already accused of being involved in the December 24-31 hijacking.

"Everyone knew of Taliban's involvement with Pakistan and hijackers of the Indian Airlines plane," the Press Trust of India quoted Fernandes as saying here.

"There was not only sympathy but much more than that for the hijackers in Kandahar," he said, referring to the southern city in Afghanistan where the plane was parked until India secured the release of 160 hostages by freeing three detained Muslim militants.

"Transnational terrorism has its epicentre in the Pak-Afghan region and is sustained by drug trafficking, money laundering and driven by Islamic extremism," the minister added.

On Friday, a Pakistani cleric who was freed from an Indian jail to end the hijacking left for Afghanistan, his father Allah Bakhsh Sabir said in the Pakistan town of Multan.

Maulana Masood Azhar, who was arrested in Indian-controlled Kashmir in 1994, returned home early this month after New Delhi bowed to the demands of the five hijackers.

A day after getting married on January 17 at his home in Bahawalpur in central Pakistan, Azhar left for Afghanistan to meet with Mulla Mohammad Omar, the supreme leader of the ruling Taliban Islamic militia, Sabir told AFP.

Omar lives in Kandahar, the Taliban militia's headquarters in southern Afghanistan.