Hijack-Swap Militant in Pakistani Kashmir
02:52 a.m. Jan 05, 2000 Eastern

By Zulfikar Ali

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - One of three militants freed by India in return for the release of 154 hostages held on a hijacked Indian plane has arrived in Pakistan-held Kashmir, witnesses said.

The witnesses said Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar was greeted by celebrating Kashmiri militants when he arrived in Muzaffarabad on Tuesday night.

Muzaffarabad is capital of what Pakistan calls Azad Kashmir, or Free Kashmir.

Zargar appeared tired as he was thronged by members of the Al-Umar Mujahideen group, one of several Muslim militant organizations battling Indian rule of disputed Kashmir.

Zargar, the founder of Al-Umar Mujahideen, made no comment to reporters who had been tipped of his imminent arrival after the hijack ended in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on December 31.

India freed Zargar and two other militants from jail in a move which ended the eight-day hijack last Friday.

His arrival coincides with increased tension between Pakistan and India caused by the hijacking and Indian allegations that Pakistan was implicated.

``No retreat, No surrender is the slogan of Mushtaq Zargar,'' said one banner held aloft by a band of waiting militants, who had been expecting his arrival for the past three days.

``I cannot express my joy upon seeing the courageous commander here among us on this blessed night. He is really a source of inspiration for us,'' one militant said.

The whereabouts of the other two militants, one a Pakistani Islamic cleric Masood Azhar, and the hijackers are not known.

The five hijackers have not been seen since they climbed out of the cockpit of the Indian Airlines plane last Friday and drove out of Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan.

They were reported by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban to be accompanied by the freed militants to an unknown destination.

Pakistan has said it will arrest the hijackers if they try to cross into Pakistan, which shares a long, porous border with Afghanistan, and the Taliban say they are not on Afghan soil.

Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday rejected Indian charges that Islamabad was behind the hijacking and urged restraint.

Islamabad denies Indian charges that the hijackers, who commandeered the Indian Airlines Airbus A-300 on December 24, were Pakistanis and that they had crossed into Pakistan with the three militants after the hijack ended. Musharraf repeated that they had not entered the country.