U.S. Seeks Cutoff of Beirut Flights : Administration Hopes to End Airport Terrorist Haven; Hijackers Identified

With the 39 American hostages safely in West Germany, the United States on Monday began legal and diplomatic steps to end the use of the Beirut airport as a haven for terrorists.

The State Department announced that the government will prohibit flights to the United States by Middle East Airlines, the Lebanese national carrier, and said it will encourage other nations to prohibit their airlines from flying to Lebanon.

The attempt to isolate the Beirut airport, at which the hijacked flight landed, was the only concrete step announced by the Administration.

A senior State Department official conceded that the measures would have had no impact on the hijacking of the TWA plane that began the hostage drama, which was seized as it departed from Athens and was diverted to Beirut under the orders of two gunmen.

Hostages Questioned

Meanwhile, U.S. officials questioned the former hostages at a U.S. military hospital in Wiesbaden, West Germany. They hoped to obtain details about the hijackers in general and, specifically, about who killed Robert Dean Stethem, the Navy diver who was the only casualty in the ordeal.

The Reagan Administration has confirmed the identities of the original hijackers of the TWA flight, it was learned Monday. However, one senior State Department official, who asked not to be named, said, “The man who pulled the trigger, as of now we don’t know.”

Administration officials declined to speak in detail about any plans to retaliate for the hijacking, particularly while seven Americans kidnaped over the last 16 months remain in captivity in Lebanon. However, Robert C. McFarlane, President Reagan’s national security adviser, said such efforts should be aimed at “the root sources of terrorism--where people are trained, where they are housed, fed, sustained over time.”

“There are two or three strategic locations in the Middle East, in particular, where that is the case,” he said in a televised interview with Independent Network News--making clear in some of the least ambiguous terms he has used that the Administration has specific targets in mind.

One well-informed source said that the administrative center of Hezbollah, the radical Muslim group to which the hijackers belong, is located in the Sheik Abdullah army barracks in Baalbek, a center of Shia Muslim activity in eastern Lebanon.

In the case of the two men who initially seized TWA flight 847 and killed Stethem, the Administration is studying options for bringing them to justice, sources said. The range of options extends from seeking to extradite them from Lebanon, a process considered unlikely to succeed in the chaos prevailing there, all the way to seizing or even kidnaping the terrorists as Israel did in the case of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

The two hijackers are known to be in an area of Muslim West Beirut, although their specific addresses are not known, one source said.

The subject of retaliation was a hotly discussed topic within the Administration, and William J. Casey, the director of the CIA, pounded the table at one point in a White House meeting as he called for retribution, one well-informed source made clear.

This source reported that some officials said they are willing to use air strikes, in which innocent people likely would be killed, rather than trying to strike individuals.

Return This Afternoon

The hijack victims, freed Sunday in Beirut, are expected to return to the United States this afternoon and to be welcomed by Reagan at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington.

With the hostages likely to reach their homes tonight, well before July 4th celebrations, one former Administration official reflected the mood of those favoring retribution when he said: “I’d rather see fireworks over the Middle East.”

The State Department official declared: “We want Stethem’s killers brought to justice.”

Such a task is complicated by the chaos in Lebanon and the fact that the United States has no extradition treaty with the Lebanese government. If the hijackers are found outside Lebanon, however, the Administration would try to have them arrested and extradited.

In the view of two sources, the United States could try to have the hijackers kidnaped and brought to this country for trial.

“The courts have usually taken the position that they don’t care how a defendant gets here unless it’s so outrageous as to shock conscience. And in this case that would take something pretty outrageous,” said Philip White, director of the Office of International Affairs in the Justice Department’s criminal division.

Off Limits to Terrorists

The senior State Department official who announced the campaign against flights using Beirut airport declared that “we want to put Beirut International Airport off limits until Beirut puts terrorists off limits.”

The official said that the Lebanese passenger airline has two flights a week to Kennedy International Airport in New York. In addition, the Administration wants to cancel the landing rights of Trans Mediterranean Airways, a Lebanese cargo carrier.

Air France, the Belgian airline Sabena and a Cyprus airline were said at the State Department to have landing privileges at Beirut--although they are not flying there now. The Reagan Administration wants authorities in France, Belgium and Cyprus to make sure that there are no Beirut flights by these airlines, to deny terrorists additional targets.