U.S. Asks Iran to Help Free Beirut Captives

The Reagan Administration has appealed to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s regime in Iran for help in freeing the American hostages still held in Lebanon, Secretary of State George P. Shultz said Sunday.

Shultz said the Administration has quietly sent messages to the governments of Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Algeria in its attempts to win the release of the six hostages, some of whom have been held longer than 18 months.

He spoke two days after four of the missing Americans, in a letter released in Beirut, appealed to President Reagan to negotiate a deal with their captors, who have demanded the release of 17 convicted terrorists imprisoned in Kuwait.

Shultz, interviewed on the CBS News program “Face the Nation,” reiterated the Administration’s refusal to make such a deal. “We do everything we can think of” short of that, he said.

“We keep talking to those trying to talk directly or indirectly to those who are holding these innocent Americans,” Shultz said.

“We try to work at it through whatever indirect contacts we have with the Iranians. We get after the Lebanese. . . . If there are others who seem to have the possibility of intermediation, such as the Algerians, we talk to (them),” he said.

The U.S. message, Shultz said, is “to make it clear to those holding hostages that they’re holding innocent people, that they are not going to gain their objectives that way, they only bring opprobrium on their heads, and get them to release these people.”

Responsibility for the kidnapings has been claimed by Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War,) a label that has been used by several factions of pro-Iranian Muslim extremists.

Shultz did not divulge any details of the communications with Iran, but other officials say the two governments have exchanged messages through the governments of Syria, Algeria, Switzerland and Japan.

Relations Severed in 1979

The United States and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since Khomeini followers seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for more than 14 months.

Last month, a caller claiming to represent Islamic Jihad said that one of the Americans--William Buckley, 56, an employee of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut--had been executed. The U.S. government, however, says proof of Buckley’s death was insufficient and still refers to six hostage Americans.

In addition to Buckley, the others are Father Lawrence Jenco, 50, Beirut chief of Catholic Relief Services; Terry A. Anderson, 38, chief Mideast correspondent for the Associated Press; David P. Jacobsen, 54, of Huntington Beach, Calif., director of American University Hospital; Peter Kilburn, 60, American University librarian, and Thomas Sutherland, dean of the university’s school of agriculture.