Stymied in Efforts for U.S. Hostages, Muslim Cleric Says

A prominent Shia Muslim cleric said Saturday that he has run into a “blank wall” in his efforts to arrange the release of four Americans being held hostage in Lebanon.

Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who is widely regarded as a leading spiritual adviser to Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian “Party of God,” said he has “exerted efforts no one else has” to try to win freedom for the hostages.

Fadlallah said he has been in contact not with the kidnapers but with individuals who exert influence over them in an effort to obtain the Americans’ release. Responsibility for the kidnapings has been claimed by an ephemeral group called Islamic Jihad.

“I’m afraid I’ve come up against a blank wall. I’m at a dead end and have not had any results,” Fadlallah said in an interview.

Not Aimed at U.S.

Importantly, Fadlallah said he believes that the Americans are being held not as an act against the United States but solely as bargaining counters to achieve the release of Arab prisoners held in Kuwait. Seventeen Arabs have been convicted by Kuwaiti authorities in connection with bombing attacks on the U.S. and French embassies there in 1983. They are now serving their sentences in Kuwaiti prisons.

Fadlallah said the case of four French hostages being held in Lebanon is “far more complex,” an apparent reference to the political difficulties between France and Iran over France’s relations with Iraq. Iran and Iraq have been at war since 1980.

“I believe the case of the American hostages does not have the political dimensions that the international media have sought to convey,” Fadlallah said, speaking through an interpreter at his home in the Beirut suburb of Beir al Abed.

On Friday, Terry Waite, an envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has been seeking the release of the American hostages, delayed his return to Lebanon.

Waite, who has visited Lebanon on two occasions in the past few weeks and apparently met with the kidnapers of the Americans, was denied a visa to visit Kuwait last week. He had hoped to travel there to discuss the hostage situation following his talks in Washington and London.

Waite became involved in the hostage problem when the four American hostages addressed an appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Anglican church. The contents of the message, which was delivered to a news agency office in Beirut, were not disclosed.

The four American hostages are Terry A. Anderson, Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press; Father Lawrence Jenco, a Roman Catholic priest; Thomas Sutherland, dean of agriculture at the American University of Beirut, and David P. Jacobson, director of the American University Hospital.

Fate of Two Unclear

The fate of two other Americans is unclear. Callers claiming to speak for Islamic Jihad have said William Buckley, a U.S. Embassy political officer kidnaped March 16, 1984, was executed. American University librarian Peter Kilburn, who disappeared in West Beirut in December, 1984, has not been mentioned by the kidnapers for several months.

Fadlallah said he has not been contacted by Waite and doubts that he could contribute to Waite’s mission.

But he was adamant in his opposition to the use of kidnaping “just for the sake of exchanging them for other hostages.”

Fadlallah, who is increasingly being cast as a moderate despite his background as a fundamentalist, apparently played a central role in obtaining the release of two prominent Lebanese Christians associated with the American University of Beirut who were kidnaped last Saturday.

The two men, Dr. Mounir Shammaa and Joseph Salameh, were released at Fadlallah’s home. They indicated in separate interviews that Fadlallah had been the deciding factor in arranging their release from what appeared to be a Shia prison in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Even though Hezbollah was responsible for the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in June, Fadlallah said that he was one of the few voices to view the air piracy with outrage.

“Means of transport are the property of humanity,” Fadlallah said. “This means that if we attack means of transport, then one day our enemy will do the same to us.”

Fadlallah maintained that the Islamic movement in Lebanon is not directed from Iran and said he has differed with Iranian leaders over policy.

He described Hezbollah as a new and exciting movement but conceded that it is “in need of guidance and coordination,” a rare reprimand.