Murder of Seized U.S. Aide Unconfirmed : Washington Seeks Word on Beirut Report of Shia Killing of Kidnap Victim

Despite the claim of a Shia Muslim terrorist group that it has killed a kidnaped American diplomat, there was no official confirmation from Beirut on Friday that William Buckley has indeed been executed.

The claim, reportedly emanting from the group known as Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War), was delivered in communiques to two Beirut newspapers. The statements said that Buckley had been executed in retaliation for the Israeli raid last Tuesday against the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunisia.

It appears certain the copies of the statement had originated with the group that kidnaped Buckley on March 16, 1984, since they were accompanied by instant photographs of the diplomat allegedly taken just minutes before he was reportedly executed.

Comment From Washington

In Washington, State Department spokesman Bernard Kalb said the U.S. government “has no confirmation” of reports Buckley has been murdered. Kalb said the government is “urgently seeking additional information.”

In the meantime, he said, “We are operating and continue to operate on the assumption that all of the hostages are alive.”

Buckley, 57, a political officer in the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, joined the State Department in 1983 after 18 years as a civilian employee of the Army.

Concern about Buckley’s well being surfaced last month after the Rev. Benjamin Weir, 61, a Presbyterian minister from Berkeley, Calif., was released by his kidnapers. After returning to the United States, Weir said that he had met and spoken to four other hostages but not Buckley and another missing American, Peter Kilburn, a librarian at the American University of Beirut.

In photographs of the hostages released earlier this year, Buckley appeared particularly haggard. Kilburn, whose photograph has never been issued, had suffered a stroke before his disappearance last December. Thus, there are fears that both Buckley and Kilburn might have died, perhaps from natural causes exacerbated by the long period of confinement.

PLO Link Questioned

There was considerable mystery over the statement’s claim that the killing was related to the Israeli raid on Tunis, since the ties between Islamic Jihad and the PLO are regarded as extremely tenuous.

After all, observers noted, the PLO has been trying to arrange Mideast peace negotiations with the United States, a goal that hardly seems closer to fulfillment with Buckley’s reported murder.

At the time of his release, Weir said the kidnapers were threatening to kill their remaining hostages or to abduct other Americans to support their demands for the release of 17 persons being held in Kuwait for terrorism.

Diplomats in the region had long assumed that a cynical balance of terror was helping to keep the Americans alive.

Imprisoned in Kuwait

Three of the Shia Muslim prisoners being held in Kuwait are under sentence of death, including the cousin of a leader of the Hezbollah (Party of God), a Shia Muslim extremist group based in the Lebanese city of Baalbek.

The death sentences were suspended after the Americans were taken hostages, but the killing of the hostages could provoke the security-conscious Kuwaitis to begin carrying out the sentences.

Islamic Jihad charged that Buckley was an agent of the CIA and said a confession of his intelligence-gathering activities would be released soon.

If the execution report is indeed genuine, it would suggest that secret negotiations to free the hostages had collapsed.

Algeria, among other countries is reported to be acting as a diplomatic intermediary between the United States and Iran, which has close ties to the Hezbollah group.