BEIJING, Dec 6: Muslims from northwestern China fighting with the Taliban have been captured in Afghanistan but the United States will not hand them over to Beijing because they are not deemed terrorists, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday.

General Francis X. Taylor, a special envoy on counterterrorism, refused to say how many Uighurs from the Xinjiang region had been captured in Afghanistan.

But he said after two days of talks with Chinese officials the United States had not designated their group, which pursues an independent state called East Turkestan, as a terrorist organization.

“No the U.S. has not designated or considers the East Turkestan organization as a terrorist organization,” he told a news conference.

“We discussed the fact that while these people are indeed involved in terrorist activities in Afghanistan, that the legitimate economic and social issues that confront people in northwestern China are not necessarily counter-terrorist issues,” he said.

China had not asked for them to be handed back and the United States would decide in time how they would be dealt with, he said.

Taylor was in Beijing to discuss increased counter-terrorism cooperation in the wake of the Sept 11 attacks.

Last month, China appealed for international support against Uighur separatists, blaming them for a string of violent attacks over the last decade.—Reuters