Plane hijackers are not in Pakistan: Musharraf

ISLAMABAD, Jan 4: Pakistani military ruler General Pervez Musharraf said Tuesday the hijackers of an Indian airliner were not in Pakistan and accused India of conducting a smear campaign.

"The hijackers are not in Pakistan. The Indian propaganda is baseless," state-run television quoted the general as saying.

"Its very sad," Musharraf said, referring to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's accusations that Pakistan was involved in the hijacking.

The eight-day hijack drama, which began when five men seized the airliner during a Christmas Eve flight from Nepal to New Delhi on December 24, ended on Friday at Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan.

India released three pro-Kashmir militants in exchange for 160 hostages and the hijackers disappeared from Kandahar. The swap has sparked criticism in India.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on Tuesday said New Delhi had "enough evidence" of Pakistan's involvement in the hijacking of an Indian plane.

"We have enough evidence of Pakistan's involvement in the hijacking of the Indian Airlines aircraft and we will disclose it at the appropriate time," Vajpayee told reporters.

"We will try to get hijackers from there (Pakistan) for trial," Vajpayee said.

Musharraf said Pakistan had played a positive role. "We tried to assist on humanitarian ground to resolve the issue as amicably as possible."

India should have thanked Pakistan "for our role in this whole incident," he said.

"But I am not surprised because whenever there is internal pressure, India has very conveniently tried to release the pressure by blaming Pakistan," he said.

"They are trying to concentrate efforts on the international community to declare Pakistan a terrorist state," he said, adding the Indian allegation was "far from truth."

Musharraf said his initial suspicions that there could be "a bigger game to the hijacking incident" had now been confirmed. India had the intention of maligning Pakistan right from the beginning, he added.

Islamabad has said the hijackers would be arrested if they entered Pakistan and would be put on trial.

Meanwhile, two of the freed militants have since been seen, one in Karachi, in southern Pakistan, and a second in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

One of the Kashmiri militants, a Pakistani scholar named Maulana Masood Azhar, has been seen in Karachi, a source in a Muslim guerilla fighting group said Wednesday.

Maulana Masood Azhar, who emerged as a central figure in the hijacking saga, has returned to Pakistan and spent hours with his friends at a Islamic seminary in Karachi, the source at the Harkat-ul Jihad-el Islami told AFP.

The group is one of several Muslim groups fighting in Indian-administered Kashmir and was once part of the Harkat-ul Ansar group.

"When I was told by my friends that Maulana sahib is back, that was the biggest happiness of my life," the source said.

"It is a great feeling to have him back. He deserved to be back as he did not commit any crime and is a Pakistani citizen."

His father said he was still waiting for Azhar to make contact.

"He has not contacted his family so far," said Allah Bakhsh Sabir from his home in Bahawalpur, in central Pakistan.

"Azhar has been released after six years detention in Indian jail and you can imagine my feelings.

"He is a Pakistani and he has every right to return home," he said.

A second of the Kashmiri militants, Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar, arrived in Muzaffarabad, in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, late Tuesday, witnesses said.

He was given a warm welcome by members of his guerilla group, Al-Umar Mujahideen, and welcome banners were put up across the town.