Hitch in Hostages’ Release Catches Syria by Surprise

The delay in the release of 39 American hijacking hostages clearly came as a major surprise to most of the parties involved in negotiations to free them--particularly to Syria, which had already announced the hostages’ safe departure from Beirut early Saturday morning.

A chagrined spokesman for President Hafez Assad, who had praised the “happy end” of the hijacking, issued a brief statement as the delay stretched into hours, expressing the hope that “the situation can be straightened out soon.”

U.S. Ambassador William L. Eagleton Jr. drove to Syria’s border with Lebanon, prepared to greet the hostages as they arrived on the fabled Beirut-to-Damascus road. He waited there four hours before returning to Damascus. He then headed back to the border, but quickly turned around and went home after a Syrian Foreign Ministry official arrived to inform him of the latest hitches in Beirut.

Eagleton, who was out of the country when the hostage crisis began, had returned here quietly to take charge of the final detailed arrangements for the hostages’ planned release through Damascus.

The early certainty here that the crisis would be resolved on Saturday was reflected by the first statements of Syrian authorities and by the arrangements made by Syrian and U.S. authorities.

On Saturday morning, two top Syrian officials, presidential foreign affairs adviser Kamal Assad Elias and press spokesman Gebran Khourieh, extolled the accord for the hostages’ release and Syria’s key role in the solution.

“Syria hopes that every party concerned will fulfill its commitments and that the (735) Lebanese prisoners in Atlit (Israel) will soon be released,” Khourieh declared at a moment when he firmly believed that the Americans had been freed and were en route here.

Elias said that “we are happy with the results as reached.”

SANA, the official Syrian news agency, had contributed to the buoyant mood early in the day. It said that as a result of the “good offices” of President Assad, the “hostages were freed (Saturday) and will be transferred to Damascus, where they are expected later today.”

A U.S. Air Force C-141 Starlifter transport plane flew into Damascus airport shortly after noon, ready to fly the hostages to Frankfurt, West Germany, en route home. It was still waiting here Saturday night.

Syrian officials said that plans had called for the hostages to be brought here overland from Beirut. In Damascus, 40 hotel rooms were reserved for them, and a ballroom was set aside for a news conference.

In Beirut last week, Shia Muslim leader Nabih Berri had told a news conference that freedom for the hostages would be contingent on Syria’s giving assurances that they would be kept in this country until Israel released its 735 Lebanese prisoners.

But Syrian officials said Saturday that, while the Americans “will be under our protection” as long as they are in this country, they would be “fully freed” once they arrived in the Syrian capital.

After resting briefly and having lunch in Damascus, the hostages had been scheduled to leave immediately for Frankfurt, where they were to be met by Vice President George Bush.

Among the disappointed people waiting here Saturday night was Calvin Plimpton, president of the American University of Beirut, who had hoped that three kidnaped members of his staff would accompany the hostages to freedom.

The three are among seven Americans kidnaped in Beirut since March, 1984, and still missing. President Reagan last week had demanded that the seven be freed, along with the hijacking hostages. But Berri, who undertook to act as mediator in the hostage crisis, repeatedly declared that he could do nothing about the seven because their captors were beyond his control.