No Sanctions Planned for Syria, Shultz Says : He Distinguishes Between Its Conduct on Airport Attacks and Libya’s, Criticizes Role of Soviets

Secretary of State George P. Shultz drew a distinction Sunday between Syrian and Libyan behavior in connection with last month’s Palestinian attacks on the Rome and Vienna airports and said there is no plan to impose sanctions against the Syrian government.

At the same time, the secretary of state criticized the Soviet Union as being “very unhelpful” during the uneasy two weeks after the airport violence, and he maintained that terrorists must pay more than an economic price for their deeds.

Two days after President Reagan suggested that his decision to order Americans to leave Libya would free the United States for military action there, Shultz said:

“We need to raise the cost to those who perpetrate terrorist acts by making them pay a price--not just an economic price--so they’ll have to think more carefully about it.”

Shultz’s remarks regarding Syria were made after other officials, most notably Robert B. Oakley, the head of the State Department’s counterterrorism office, raised the possibility of applying economic sanctions to Syria.

Such sanctions were directed at Libya last week, freezing Libyan government bank accounts in the United States and cutting off all but humanitarian U.S. commerce with the regime of Col. Moammar Kadafi.

According to some reports, the Palestinians who carried out the Dec. 27 attacks at Rome and Vienna passed through Damascus, the capital of Syria, on their way to Europe from bases in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. Nineteen people were killed in the violence, including five Americans and four of the seven terrorists.

“To what extent . . . that involved the Syrian authorities, we’re not able to say,” Shultz said on the CBS News interview program “Face the Nation.”

However, he said the passports of some of the attackers had been confiscated by Libya from Tunisian citizens.

“So they had to come from Libya,” Shultz said. “Now that doesn’t mean that everything that was done was connected with Libya. But sure there is a very definite Libyan connection with this and a whole pattern of terrorist activity.”

While Syria, with Libya, is on the State Department list of nations supporting terrorism, “Syria’s behavior toward all of these things is rather different from Libya’s,” Shultz said without citing examples.

Syrian forces, which are well equipped by the Soviet Union, are active in Lebanon, and U.S. officials have been sensitive to the important role that Syrian President Hafez Assad can play in long-range efforts to stabilize the Middle East.

At the same time, Administration officials suggest that the Syrians could do more to obtain the freedom, or learn the fates, of the Americans who have disappeared in Beirut over the past 22 months. At least four, and perhaps six, are believed to be held in Lebanon.

Without being specific, Shultz said, “We are working with Syria on a number of fronts in a constructive way.”

Calling attention to the Soviets’ support for Syria and Libya, Shultz said “they have made many statements in connection with this latest series of events that I regard as very unhelpful.”

Appearing on the same program, Foreign Minister Ali Tureiki of Libya raised the possibility that the Arab nations would withdraw their American bank deposits in the wake of the freeze of Libyan government accounts in the United States.

Asked specifically whether they would begin withdrawals, Tureiki responded, “I’m sure they will do it.”

‘There Is No Evidence’

But Shultz said in an interview moments later that “there is no evidence of that.”

According to the Commerce Department, the 13 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries--which includes Arab as well as other nations--maintained $4.7 billion in direct investments in the United States in 1984. The Treasury Department says that in 1984, the oil-exporting nations of Africa and Asia, which are predominantly Arab, could have drawn $18.1 billion from U.S. banks.

However, other holdings push the sum of Arab money in the United States much higher, with Saudi Arabia alone holding an estimated $50 billion to $60 billion in U.S. government securities, according to Reuters news agency.

Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III said in response to a question on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that offering a reward for the capture of Abu Nidal, whose Palestinian group has been blamed for the attacks in Rome and Vienna, is “something obviously we will contemplate, and we may want to do that.”

No Known Charges

However, he acknowledged that the United States has no jurisdiction in the airport attacks. There are no known charges pending against Abu Nidal in this country, and the reward would have to be paid for his delivery to another nation, if there were charges against him there.

Meese offered a catalogue of anti-terrorist steps the Administration wants taken by Congress. He urged approval of legislation allowing the use of the death penalty in terrorism and hostage-taking cases and support for revision of treaties that now block some extradition cases.

In addition, the attorney general said that “an assault or the murder of a United States citizen abroad” should be made a federal offense, giving this nation the jurisdiction it now lacks in cases such as those in Rome and Vienna.

Meese reiterated President Reagan’s rejection of a suggestion by Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) that Kadafi be assassinated. However, asked about Metzenbaum’s remark, made last week in two interviews, the attorney general replied, “You’re tempting me there.”