Talks between negotiators and hijackers holding 155 hostages went "very well" and he felt "optimistic" about negotiations with hijackers in the Afghan city of Kandahar.on December 30, a senior official said on December 30.

"We are optimistic," Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, Taliban's foreign minister, told reporters in southern Kandahar, where the plane containing the hostages and five hijackers has been sitting on the tarmac since last weekend.

"The main difficulty is, if there is an agreement between the two sides, where do the hijackers go and where will the prisoners be freed?"

Diplomats at the airport in Kandahar said the Indian negotiators have indicated they are willing to free some of the 35 pro-Kashmiri militants whose release the hijackers have been demanding.

However, the Indian Foreign Ministry said this was not true. An Indian negotiator in Kandahar said: "We are not talking about numbers. We are still talking about general issues."

The hijackers are also seeking the release of a Palestinian Muslim cleric, Masood Azhar, whom India arrested in 1994 claiming that he was a leader of the Kashmiri fighters.

The ordeal for the hostages entered its seventh day on Thursday. The plane was hijacked on 24 December, and has been on the tarmac at Kandahar since early the following day.