New Delhi: The Government found it difficult to handle the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1999 because of widespread media coverage of the incident, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran said on Monday.
"The media complicated the matter," Saran said while inaugurating the third programme for diplomatic correspondents.
The media publicity proved to be a 'burst of oxygen' for the hijackers.
The Government then found itself in a bind as a huge amount of coverage given to the hijackers on the one hand and the plight of the passengers and their relatives on the other, Saran explained.
Pointing out that such crises cannot be sorted in public glare, he said all terrorist outfits, whether it was al-Qaeda, Hizbul Mujahideen or Lashker-e-Toiba, were a threat to global peace and none of them could be taken lightly by the intelligence agencies and security forces.
On Sunday, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, Farooq Abdullah, launched a scathing attack on Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani, the then prime minister and home minister, accusing them of compelling him to release Jaish-e-Mohammad founder Maulana Masood Azhar for which the 'world will pay the price'.
The former ally of the ruling NDA said he had unsuccessfully desired to resign in view of the compelling directives of Vajpayee and Advani instead of being seen as 'one responsible for promoting terrorism in this form'.
He said the Central pressure on him to release terrorists in view of the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar in December 1999 was similar to the one he underwent exactly 10 years ago after the abduction of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Union home minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.
"As far as Maulana Masood Azhar is concerned, the decision to release him and the two other terrorists was made by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and by L K Advani," Abdullah said.
Comments
0 comment