Hostage’s Son Says Family Is Optimistic

Eric Jacobsen, the son of the Huntington Beach hospital administrator held hostage in Beirut, said Tuesday that the family is still optimistic that British envoy Terry Waite can successfully negotiate the release of his father and three other American hostages.

“But this is a time that requires a lot of patience,” the younger Jacobsen said about efforts to free his father, David P. Jacobsen.

The elder Jacobsen, 54, was kidnaped by gunmen six months ago while he walked to his office at American University Hospital in Beirut.

The other three Americans being held by the Islamic Jihad, a Shiite fundamentalist group, are Father Lawrence Jenco, a Roman Catholic priest of Joliet, Ill.; Terry Anderson of Lorain, Ohio, the chief Middle East correspondent for Associated Press, and Thomas Sutherland, a Scottish-born dean of agriculture at American University.

Waite, who has had two meetings with the captors of the four Americans, was in Washington on Tuesday discussing the situation with Vice President George Bush. But Jacobsen said that he had not talked to Waite during the envoy’s trip to the United States and did not expect to hear from him before Waite leaves the country today.

“His trip will not be as long as anticipated and I don’t think there will be time for him to talk to the families,” Jacobsen said.

He added: “I haven’t been told much (by U.S. officials) about what is happening. What little I know, I have heard it (news about the negotiations) through the news media.”

Jacobsen, the elder son of the captured American, said the family, which also includes a younger brother, Paul of Westminster, and a younger sister, Diane of Long Beach, would spend Thanksgiving visiting other relatives.

“We will be having a holiday dash visiting all our relatives,” he said.

Jacobsen also said that he understood the successful release of his father and the other three Americans could take time--perhaps weeks--to negotiate.

“We are trying to remain optimistic, but at the same time we want to keep that optimism in check because we don’t know very much right now,” he said. “And we feel a lot better than we have in the past when we felt nothing was being done.”

Waite made few comments in Washington Tuesday after his meeting with Bush, but he praised the families of the four hostages and urged them to remain hopeful because “some good steps forward” have been taken.

“I think it’s difficult. Probably we’ve got some way to go. But by no means should we say we are through yet,” he added.

Waite, the personal envoy of the archbishop of Canterbury, said he wanted to talk to Kuwaiti officials about 17 Moslems jailed for bombings in Kuwait. The kidnapers are asking that those prisoners be exchanged for the release of the four Americans in Beirut.

Waite met personally with the captors last week at an unknown location in Beirut after the four American hostages wrote a letter to the Rev. Robert Runcie, the archbishop of Canterbury, to seek Waite’s intervention on their behalf.

The British envoy has assured U.S. officials and the families that the hostages are alive and well. However, he has not indicated if he saw the hostages when he met with the kidnapers.

In letters to Runcie, President Reagan and their families, the hostages said their captors had told them that a fifth American hostage, U.S. diplomat William Buckley of Medford, Mass., had been killed.

There was no indication on the fate of a sixth kidnaped American, Peter Kilburn of San Francisco, the librarian at the American University in Beirut.