New Delhi, Aug 27 - Adding to the BJP's woes, former national security advisor (NSA) Brajesh Mishra said Thursday that L.K. Advani was part of the decisions taken 'unanimously' by the then Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) regarding the release of militants to save 160 hostages on the hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999.

'The decisions were taken by the CCS, which had (then) prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, home minister L.K. Advani, finance minister Yashwant Sinha, defence minister George Fernandes and external affairs minster Jaswant Singh as its members,' Mishra told journalist Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN.

The comment of Mishra, former prime minister Vajpayee's closest aide, comes days after Jaswant Singh said he had 'covered' up for Advani during the 2009 Lok Sabha campaign by concealing that the BJP's prime ministerial candidate knew of the terrorist-hostage swap during the 1999 hijacking episode.

In a bitter attack on Advani after his sacking from the BJP last week, Jaswant Singh had revealed that the former home minister's claim that he was unaware of Jaswant Singh accompanying three freed terrorists for securing the release of 160 hostages was not true.

Advani had all along claimed that he was not in the know that Jaswant Singh was on the plane with three terrorists to Kandahar.

Rebutting Advani's claims, Mishra said: 'I am not going to get into anything that then home minister Advani said.