950820

Kashmiri militant

group joins search

for hostages

SRINAGAR:   A Kashmiri militant group opposed to the kidnapping of five Western tourists by Al-Faran guerrillas said on Sunday it had sent its gunmen to comb the Himalayan mountains for the four surviving hostages.

Leaders of the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimoon group, often regarded with suspicion by some Kashmiri separatists for their alleged links with the Indian government, told a news conference that they planned to disarm and arrest the Al-Faran militants.

"We have sent a group of 25 commandos to track these people in Ashmuqam," Ansar ul Haq, the group's deputy commander, told reporters at Srinagar's Ahdoo's Hotel.

Ashmuqam is a small mountain village 65 km (40 miles) southeast of Jammu and Kashmir's summer capital of Srinagar, where a peasant woman found the beheaded body of Norwegian hostage Hans Christian Ostroe a week ago.

Al-Faran has threatened to kill the remaining four hostages, a German, two Britons and an American, if the Indian government does not free 15 jailed militants soon.

Ikhwan-ul-Muslimoon, which opposes total independence for Kashmir but wants a plebiscite to determine whether it will go with India or Pakistan, denies criticism by rival groups that it was backed by the Indian government.

Haq estimated the Al-Faran had 20 guerrillas.

"We intend to first disarm them and then arrest them," he said.

Defence experts say tracking the Al-Faran in the mountain terrain was a difficult task.

It was not clear how the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimoon proposed to approach the issue or why it made its intentions public.

Indian newspapers said on Sunday the Al-Faran had changed its hideouts frequently, on one occasion four times in a day, following warnings that Indian commandos were planning a military raid to rescue the hostages.

The Indian government has asked the guerrillas to furnish proof that the captives are well.

Government officials said a group of Western specialists experienced in handling kidnappings met the governor of India's Jammu and Kashmir state, K.V. Krishna Rao, on Saturday to discuss the various options.

Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao was quoted by state-run All India Radio as saying New Delhi will make "all possible efforts ... to secure the safe release of the hostages".

It did not say whether these efforts included negotiations to free 15 jailed Moslem militants as demanded by the Al-Faran in exchange for sparing the lives of the hostages.

Al-Faran, which kidnapped the five Western tourists from Kashmir's scenic Pahalgam Mountains last month, beheaded Ostroe last weekend.

Asked whether the government planned to mount a commando raid on the little-known group, an official spokesman said: "Only if the other options are closed off and we think the hostages are not safe, then we'll consider it."-Reuter