Media complicated Kandahar hijack: Saran

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 of the day 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, he 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-Tayiba, were a threat to global peace and none of them could be taken lightly by the intelligence agencies and security forces.