Lebanon Hostage Release

By William R. Doerner.

The convoy of three vehicles pulled to a stop in front of the old U.S. embassy building on Ein Mreisseh Boulevard in Muslim West Beirut at 7 Sunday morning. As planned, a Westerner wearing dark glasses slid into the seat of one of the cars. Then, escorted by two truckloads of Lebanese police as a precaution against sniper fire, the convoy barreled toward the Green Line that divides the city's Muslim and Christian sectors. Minutes later, the cars crossed safely into Christian East Beirut, and David Jacobsen, director of Beirut's American University Hospital, was a free man for the first time in 17 months.

Jacobsen thus became the first of seven Americans who had been still missing in Lebanon to win freedom, and there were hopes Thomas Sutherland might soon be next. Jacobsen's release followed a period of intense and secretive negotiations between officials of Islamic Jihad (Holy War), a shadowy terrorist organization known to be holding at least two other Americans, and Anglican Envoy Terry Waite, the Englishman who had helped win the freedom of two American churchmen who had been held captive in Lebanon, one 13 months ago, one as recently as four months ago.

On May 28, 1985, Jacobsen was walking from his apartment to his office in the war-torn city when six men picked him up. According to Jacobsen's son, his father tried to keep his spirits up during his captivity by telling himself every week that he was going to be released the next Sunday. As each Sunday passed for 17 months, he told hostages held at the same location that it was going to be the next Sunday. Thus it seemed only fitting that his release actually came on a Sunday.

Despite his attempts to remain optimistic, Jacobsen became more discouraged as the months dragged on. Last November he was one of the signers of a letter to Reagan that appealed to the President to negotiate their release. When one of the other hostages, Father Lawrence Jenco, a Roman Catholic relief-agency official, was freed by his captors in July, he carried with him a videotape recording of Jacobsen. On it, Jacobsen said he "felt like one of Custer's men," adding, "You know the end of their stories. Pray that ours will have a happier ending." In another videotape released last month, Jacobsen was highly critical of the Reagan Administration for having negotiated the release of Journalist Nicholas Daniloff in Moscow while refusing to make any deals for his freedom. Said he on tape: "Don't we deserve the same attention and protection that you gave Daniloff?"

But after the months of few developments, events moved quickly last week. Waite showed up unexpectedly in Beirut on Friday for his first visit in ten months. He clearly hoped to improve on his record of one release at a time. Islamic Jihad seemed to indicate that diplomatic activity was afoot that could achieve such a goal. Although State Department officials insisted that no deal was in the works, the terrorist group said in a statement following Jacobsen's release that the U.S. had embarked on "approaches that could lead, if continued, to a solution of the hostages issue."

Jacobsen's dramatic trip to freedom capped a week of swirling diplomatic activity in the Middle East, centered on Britain's break in diplomatic relations with Syria on Oct. 24. That action followed the conviction of a would-be bomber of an El Al plane who had received assistance from Syria's embassy in London, whose trial exposed the Damascus terrorist connection that had been long suspected but never proved. The U.S. supported Britain by withdrawing its ambassador from Syria, and last week Secretary of State George Shultz characterized Syria's role in the foiled bombing episode as beneath contempt. "When a country does that, it isolates itself from the civilized community," he told a Los Angeles audience.

Stung by such signs of opprobrium, Syrian President Hafez Assad evidently embarked on a damage-control campaign by addressing the one issue that could restore some of Syria's image in the West: the 20 foreigners held hostage by Shi'ite extremists in Lebanon. As he has in the past when it served his purposes, notably in the release of TWA passengers hijacked to Beirut in 1985, Assad asserted his authority with the Shi'ite groups and apparently arranged for at least a token hostage release. Waite, whose patient efforts to end the hostage crisis were well known to Syria, made a secret visit to Damascus on Saturday, evidently to arrange the details of Jacobsen's release. "This is very typical of the Syrians," said a high-ranking observer in Israel. "They realized that they made a blunder of international proportions, and they are looking for something big to remedy it."

Syria plays such a vital role in Middle East politics, thought, that most European countries were unwilling to rally behind Britain's diplomatic efforts against Damascus. At a meeting early last week of European Community foreign ministers in Luxembourg, Britain tried to enlist the support of its partners. The session, though, quickly became what one British participant called a "small disaster." The other countries made it clear that they wanted to play no part in the campaign for sanctions. Six of the twelve E.C. member nations did not even bother to send their foreign ministers. A British proposal that the entire Community withdraw its ambassadors from Damascus for consultations was blocked by France, West Germany, Spain and Greece. Proposals to cut off arms sales to Syria, stiffen visa requirements for Syrian visitors and place restrictions on Syrian embassies and plane flights in Europe were all tabled until an E.C. meeting Nov. 10 in London.

In the end, the E.C. representatives limited themselves to a statement declaring that they "shared the United Kingdom's sense of outrage" at the El Al incident and at the fact that "state agencies" were involved. Though Syria was never mentioned, Greece would not even go along with this mild rebuff.

British officials were furious at the faintheartedness on the Continent but publicly confined themselves to polite expressions of disappointment. Other reactions were more forceful. London's Daily Mail called the Europeans "jellyfish," while in the U.S. the Wall Street Journal titled its editorial on the subject "The Euro-Cowards." Snapped one disgusted senior Thatcher aide: "Either you're in the business of antiterrorism or you're not."

The British, however, were themselves at least partly at fault because they had failed to prepare their European partners for the serious measures they were going to ask them to make. The French were caught in a particularly embarrassing position. Although Premier Jacques Chirac has taken a tough public line against terrorism, at the time the British broke off relations with Syria his government was engaged in furtive negotiations with Damascus, in an effort to forestall a further wave of bombings like those that terrorized Paris in September and to free the French hostages held in Lebanon. In pursuit of these goals, France reportedly was also in the midst of negotiating an arms deal with Syria, though last week French officials vigorously denied it. Still, Interior Minister Charles Pasqua told a Saudi Arabian newspaper that there was now "real collaboration" between French and Syrian intelligence services to fight terrorism. He added that France's Syrian friends were "pained and shocked" to hear themselves accused in the Paris bombings.

The most intriguing French activity in the Middle East last week was reported in the Paris daily newspaper Le Monde. The paper said that France, via Algeria and Syria, had arranged a "truce" with Lebanon's Abdallah clan, whom France has held responsible for the September wave of bombings. Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, presumed leader of a group called the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction, is serving a four-year term in a French prison for possession of arms, explosives and false documents. According to Le Monde, the terrorist group, based in northern Lebanon, was pressured to hold off on new actions at least until February, when Georges Abdallah is to go on trial for complicity in the murder of an American military attache and an Israeli diplomat. The French reportedly intimated to LARF leaders that the evidence in the case is weak, and Abdallah is likely to be acquitted. While French officials denied that there was any formal truce with the Abdallahs, they admitted that government-to-government negotiations had been undertaken with Syria and others to prevent a recurrence of the Paris bombings.

Waite's mission was a secret until he called the Beirut office of the Associated Press on Friday to tell a reporter that negotiations "appear to be moving." Then he added cryptically, " You keep an eye, just keep an eye." Waite left Beirut late Friday by U.S. helicopter for Cyprus. Dozens of reporters quickly set up watch at the Larnaca airport on the island, and in the absence of any hard information, rumors about a hostage deal began sweeping through the Middle East. Seven thousand miles away, campaigning for Republican candidates in Washington State and aware of the possibility of new hostage releases, President Ronald Reagan said, "I've got my fingers crossed." For the families of the missing Americans, it was time once again to endure the agonizing wait for what might be but was not yet.

There was some speculation that Waite's negotiations this time involved hostages other than Americans, and perhaps went beyond Lebanon. According to a knowledgeable Israeli source, Assad was attempting a "multinational swap," a kind of coordinated release involving not just U.S. hostages but possibly those from Britain, France and Italy, and even an Israeli airman held in Lebanon. In Israel, the counterpart would presumably be the freeing of some or all of 108 Shi'ites being held in southern Lebanon by the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army militia. It was not clear whether a grand swap would also involve other Arab prisoners held in the West. According to one report circulating in Beirut, France would turn loose Georges Ibrahim Abdallah. French officials promptly denied any such deal.

As on his three previous visits, Waite arrived in Beirut at the invitation of Islamic Jihad. He flew out of London Thursday evening, picked up a Lear jet in Frankfurt and continued on to Cyprus, arriving just after midnight. An American helicopter then transported him to Beirut. His use of U.S. facilities for his flights was not surprising, even though officials traveling with President Reagan said they had no direct involvement in his initiative. They pointed out that U.S. helicopters fly frequently between Beirut and Larnaca, where many U.S. embassy personnel have been evacuated for security reasons. Waite had ample reason, moreover, for not wanting to spend any more time than necessary in Beirut. Last November he was trapped for several hours in a building there that came under withering cross fire in a street battle between Shi'ite and Druze militiamen.

The U.S. hostages, like 13 other foreigners held by various extremist groups, were captured randomly in the chaotic city, and have served as unhappy pawns in the larger game of Middle East politics. Besides Jacobsen and Sutherland, American University's acting dean of agriculture, the Islamic Jihad had also captured Terry Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press. The same terrorist group also took William Buckley, political officer of the U.S. embassy, and claims to have killed him, though no body has ever been found. As a price for freeing its captives, Islamic Jihad has demanded the release of 17 members of a largely Shi'ite movement serving prison sentences in Kuwait for, among other offenses, terrorist attacks on the U.S. and French embassies.

Kuwait has flatly refused to cooperate in any such trade, and last December denied Waite's application for a visa. Washington has declined to bring pressure on the Kuwaitis to reconsider. Evidently as part of an effort to push the Reagan Administration to force a swap, Islamic Jihad over the past 13 months has released two of its American prisoners, Father Jenco, and the Rev. Benjamin Weir, a Presbyterian missionary. Both had been held captive for more than a year. Waite had a hand in the two releases, though he has never spelled out his exact role.

The three other U.S. hostages were abducted this fall. They are Joseph Cicippio, American University's comptroller; Frank Reed, director of a private elementary school in Beirut; and Edward Tracy, a writer. Their claimed abductors, the Revolutionary Justice Organization and Arab Revolutionary Cells-Omar Moukhtar Forces, are if anything more mysterious and less known than Islamic Jihad.

Waite's latest mission to Beirut is his most difficult, especially if it involves a multinational swap that must await the approval of several conflicting parties. He has proved in the past that he has the patience, stamina and staying power needed to hold hostage negotiations. His success in winning the release of Jacobsen sparked new hope that he will finally be able to conclude the long Beirut hostage ordeal.

With reporting by Roland Flamini/Jerusaand Scott MacLeod/Cairo