The Hindu : National : Jaswant was satisfied with Kandahar outcome: Talbott

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Thursday, Sep 23, 2004

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Jaswant was satisfied with Kandahar outcome: Talbott

By Our Diplomatic Correspondent

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 22. Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and then External Affairs Minister, Jaswant Singh, was "sipping champagne" when Strobe Talbott, a senior official in the Clinton administration, telephoned to "congratulate" him, after the hijacking of the Indian Airlines aircraft to Kandahar ended on December 31, 1999.

"When word reached me, I put in a call to congratulate Jaswant," Mr. Talbott writes in a new book. "I found him at home, sipping champagne and surrounded by friends and family. He was exhausted but satisfied, convinced that he had made the right decision... " the former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State said of his conversation with Mr. Singh.

Varying reactions

It may be recalled that Masood Azhar, who founded the Jaish-e-Muhammad terrorist outfit, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, responsible for the murder of the American journalist, Daniel Pearl, and Mushtaq Zargar flew with Mr. Jaswant Singh in a special aircraft to Kandahar as part of the hostages-for-terrorists deal.

In his book "Engaging India," Mr. Talbott says, "Indian intelligence believed, on the basis of intercepted communications, that unless the standoff had been resolved that day, the hijackers would have forced the plane to take off on New Year's Day and blown it up in the air with all the passengers on board — a deliberately timed terrorist fireworks display to mark the new millennium."

According to Mr. Talbott, the "initial relief" that swept India gave way to criticism of Mr. Singh for the price he paid. "On January 2, two days after the end of the hostage crisis, heavy shelling resumed across the Line of Control, killing six people on the Indian side.

"The next day a bomb ripped through a busy vegetable market in Srinagar, killing 18 people. The fresh outbursts of violence made the release of the three militants even more controversial in India. The hijacking was seen as a personal victory for [the Pakistan Army Chief, Pervez] Musharraf, who was widely believed to have masterminded the incident as payback for the humiliation he had suffered as a result of [the then Prime Minister] Nawaz Sharif's capitulation to [President Bill] Clinton at Blair House," the book claimed.

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