Media made it knotty: Kandahar hijack of IA IC

New Delhi: The Government found it difficult to handle the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC814 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.
28/08/06 Agencies/Central Chronicle

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline