Americans Held in Lebanon Ask Reagan for Help

Four kidnaped Americans sent a letter to President Reagan on Friday, appealing to him to negotiate their release because their Shia Muslim captors were “growing impatient.”

“It is in your power to have us home by Christmas,” the four men said in a letter addressed to Reagan and delivered to the Associated Press in Beirut. “Will you not have mercy on us and our families and do so?”

The Reagan Administration rejected the appeal for negotiations, which was the first the kidnaped Americans have made.

“We do not negotiate with terrorists,” White House spokesman Larry Speakes said in Washington.

“Until we see the letters, we cannot verify either that they are genuine or when they were written,” he added. “We remind the kidnapers that we hold them fully responsible for the well-being of their captives. We call upon the kidnapers to release the American and all other hostages in Lebanon forthwith.”

Speakes said Reagan had been briefed on news reports about the letter and the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was examining it to verify its authenticity. The handwriting of two of the hostages was identified by former co-workers or relatives in Beirut.

The letter was the first public appeal by the group of hostages for negotiations to obtain their freedom.

They said they would be killed if any attempt was made to rescue them. The letter also said they were being held in primitive conditions and their physical and mental health was deteriorating.

An unidentified young man threw a package containing the handwritten appeal to Reagan at the feet of a guard outside the Associated Press bureau in Beirut and told him to deliver it to the news agency.

The parcel was a blue folder, sealed with transparent tape. It contained several other letters, including ones to the families of each hostage.

One of the four hostages is Terry Anderson, chief AP correspondent for the Middle East, who was seized in Beirut on March 16. AP staff members said they recognized Anderson’s handwriting in the letters and his signature.

The letter also carried the signatures of Anderson; the Rev. Lawrence Jenco, a Roman Catholic priest; David Jacobsen, director of the American University Hospital in Beirut, and Thomas Sutherland, dean of agriculture at the American University.

Sutherland’s wife Jean, who is in Beirut, verified his handwriting.

The letter addressed to Reagan said the four had been told that another hostage, diplomat William Buckley, “was dead,” but they did not mention a sixth American, Peter Kilburn, a 60-year-old librarian at the university who has been missing since Dec. 3, 1984.

A fundamentalist Shia Muslim group named Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for the kidnapings. Jihad means holy war in Arabic.