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Afghan plane in Tashkent, Taliban seek help

KABUL: An Afghan airliner carrying 178 people on an internal flight mysteriously diverted to Uzbekistan on Sunday and the ruling Taliban movement said it was trying to find out why.

"We are going to ask the Uzbek authorities to help us make contact with the plane's crew," chief Taliban spokesman Abdul Hai Mutmaen told Reuters.

He declined to speculate about the possibility that the aircraft, which was on an internal flight from Kabul to the northern Town of Mazar-i-Sharif, had been hijacked.

A spokesman for the anti-Taliban opposition alliance led by veteran commander Ahmad Shah Masood said it was not involved and had no information about the incident.

The Boeing 727 operated by national carrier Ariana Airlines disappeared from radar screens and landed at the Uzbek capital Tashkent shortly afterwards.

Airline president Mullah Hamidullah told Reuters a message had been sent to Uzbekistan asking why the plane had gone to Tashkent, which is about as far from Kabul as Mazar-i-Sharif.

"We have asked them to find out why the plane has landed there, what the crew want and who is behind this," he said. Taliban officials said there had been no technical problems reported with the plane nor any bad weather on the way to Mazar-i-Sharif.

TALEBAN AMBASSADOR

The Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Sayed Mohammad Haqqani, told Reuters he was in touch with the Uzbek embassy in Islamabad and had confirmed that the aircraft had landed in Tashkent.

He said he had asked the Uzbek authorities to ensure that the passengers were safe but declined further comment.

Airline president Hamidullah said the plane was carrying 151 passengers, mostly civilians, and crew, but also had some unregistered passengers without tickets which he presumed were children, taking the total number of people on board to 178.

Ariana operates three 727s and four Antonov aircraft as well as a fleet of various smaller planes.

It has been confined to internal flights since the imposition of U.N. sanctions last year to punish the Taliban for its failure to extradite or expel Saudi-born terrorism suspect Osama bin Laden. The sanctions do not affect domestic flights.-Reuters