One of Slain Hostages Is Identified as U.S. Librarian

One of the three hostages killed by Muslim extremists near Beirut in reprisal for the U.S. raid on Libya was identified Friday as an American, and a statement here by British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe raised the possibility that Libyans may have been involved in the killing.

The body of Peter Kilburn, 62, of San Francisco was identified by a longtime friend Friday at the American University Hospital in Beirut. Kilburn was working as a librarian at the university when he was kidnaped Dec. 3, 1984.

His body was found Thursday in the hills east of Beirut alongside those of two British teachers, Leigh Douglas, 34, and Philip Padfield, 40. The body was initially identified by an Irish diplomat as that of a third Briton, writer Alec Collett. Like Kilburn, the three British nationals had also been held captive by Muslim extremists.

The three were shot through the head, and a group called the Arab Revolutionary Cells claimed responsibility. A note found with the bodies described them as two British intelligence officers and a CIA agent, killed in retaliation for the U.S. bombing of Libya on Tuesday and for Britain’s allowing the attacking U.S. planes to take off from bases in England.

Worldwide protests continued for a fourth day against the raid, ordered by President Reagan in reprisal for the April 5 terrorist attack on a West Berlin discotheque in which one American serviceman was killed and many others were injured. The Administration said it has “irrefutable proof” of Libya’s responsibility for the attack.

Friday’s protests included violent and peaceful demonstrations, as well as bomb threats, against U.S. and British facilities in a number of cities. In New Delhi, for instance, Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach said that his country will suspend talks with U.S. officials on the fate of American soldiers missing in Southeast Asia until the United States ends hostilities against Libya.

‘Direct Libyan Involvement’

Meanwhile, in a written statement issued by the British Foreign Office on Friday, Howe said that there was “good reason” to believe the two slain Britons had been held by Libyans before their deaths.

“For some time we have had firm evidence of direct Libyan involvement in the kidnaping of Mr. Douglas and Mr. Padfield and had good reason to believe that they were in Libyan hands,” Howe said. “Although we decided not to publicize it because of the risk to their lives, this was part of the evidence we had before us of Libyan state-directed terrorism.”

Howe’s statement was made before the third body was positively identified as that of Kilburn, but the circumstances surrounding the execution-style killings indicate that the three were killed together in a similar manner.

“It does look circumstantially like the same hand,” a Foreign Office spokesman said after Kilburn’s body had been identified.

Libyan Disclaimer

(Libya’s ambassador-designate to the United Nations, Ali Treiki, in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, denied any Libyan involvement in the deaths of the three kidnap victims.)

Kilburn, who was unmarried, was in poor health when he was kidnaped 16 months ago. He had once suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed, and he was able to walk only with the aid of a cane. He was said to have had a weak heart and poor vision.

A colleague in Beirut described him as someone who “wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“He was lost in books. He liked trains, all kinds of obscure, ridiculous things,” the friend said.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, located in Christian East Beirut, said that he was aware of the report about Kilburn but that “we have not seen or examined the body ourselves because it is in an area of Beirut which is off-limits for us.”

State Department spokesman Bernard Kalb said, “We do not . . . have positive forensic identification.”

‘2 Phone Calls’

“I received two phone calls this morning from the State Department,” said Tim Kilburn, the victim’s nephew, in California. “The first was that the body was not (British hostage) Alec Collett. The second call confirmed it was Peter.

“I’m very angry with our government for bombing Libya, and I feel very sad for the world,” he added. “We’re making a step toward World War III.”

A Foreign Office official in London declined to elaborate on Howe’s charges of Libyan involvement in the slayings, claiming that to do so might endanger the lives of two other Britons, including Collett, abducted in Beirut and presumably still held hostage.

“Maybe in a few days we will be in a position to say more, but I can add nothing at this time,” the official said.

There were conflicting reports Friday about Collett, 63, kidnaped over a year ago in Muslim-controlled West Beirut, and John McCarthy, 29, a television cameraman who was abducted by armed gunmen Thursday on his way to Beirut airport.

‘Barbaric Raid’

A group that originally said it kidnaped Collett in March, 1985, claimed in a telephone call to a Beirut news agency that Collett had been hanged as a spy “in reprisal for the joint barbaric British-American raid on Libya.”

An different caller claimed that McCarthy had been executed, too, but a second anonymous caller said that he was still alive.

Twenty-one foreigners, including five Americans and 11 Frenchmen, remain missing in Lebanon.

In London, Terry Waite, who visited Beirut three times late last year as an envoy from the Church of England to try to negotiate freedom for the hostages, said the U.S. air raid had “increased enormously” the risk to the hostages.

The outlook is “very, very bleak,” Waite said. “The fact that America took the action that it did in relationship to Libya has made it even more difficult now for me to ask for restraint by the terrorists.”

Warning Broadcast

A warning transmitted by the British Broadcasting Corp.’s World Service on Friday urged the handful of British nationals who remain in West Beirut to stay indoors and keep in telephone contact with their embassy. They were told not to try to leave the Muslim part of the city.

In an increase of the British military presence in the Mediterranean, apparently to support a possible evacuation of British citizens from Middle Eastern countries, including Libya, a squadron of Royal Air Force F-4 Phantom combat aircraft arrived at Gibraltar.

Additional RAF Hercules transport aircraft were sent earlier to a British base in Cyprus.

A Foreign Office official declined to provide any details of contingency evacuation plans, but added, “They exist and are under rigorous and active review.”

About 5,000 Britons reside in Libya, where many work in the Libyan oil fields.

U.S. diplomatic and military officials also moved to protect Americans overseas.

Airlift From Sudan

More than 170 Americans were airlifted to Nairobi, Kenya, from the Sudanese capital of Khartoum because of anti-American sentiment in that city where an embassy employee was shot and wounded Tuesday, hours after the U.S. raid on Libya. More Americans were expected to leave Sudan later, most of them dependents of embassy staff and non-essential embassy personnel.

The commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, Gen. Glenn K. Otis, imposed “burdensome and prudent” security measures on his 218,000 soldiers. The measures included a midnight-to-5 a.m. curfew, cancellation of off-base activities, rigorous searches of cars entering army facilities and other steps to thwart potential car bombers.

According to news agency reports, violent demonstrations occurred Friday in Accra, Ghana, where a policeman was killed in clashes; in Manila, where 800 Muslim Filipinos burned an American flag and beat up a Canadian whom they mistook for an American; and in Dacca, Bangladesh, and Amsterdam, two cities where protesters threw stones at the U.S. Embassy.

There were also peaceful marches or bomb threats directed against American or British government buildings in Bangkok, Thailand; Johannesburg, South Africa; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Toronto; Warsaw, and at the United Nations. Bomb threats also delayed a British Airways jet in Rome and two Delta flights in Montreal.

Manhattan Protest

About 300 demonstrators opposing both the Libya raid and U.S. intervention in Nicaragua held a noisy protest in midtown Manhattan as President Reagan attended a Republican luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

In Ankara, Turkey, police arrested two foreigners carrying a bag of explosives outside a U.S. military officers’ club and, after questioning them, arrested two more foreigners, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported. Ankara Police Chief Ali Akan said the arrests foiled a planned attack on the club.

In New Delhi, where he is attending a meeting of the so-called “nonaligned” nations, Thach, the Vietnamese foreign minister, said his country “could not have the talks when brutal and inhuman actions are being committed against a nonaligned country.”

Several U.S. delegations have visited Hanoi since last year to discuss the fate of 1,792 U.S. servicemen listed as missing in action in Vietnam since the war there ended in 1975. The next round of talks was to have been held April 23-26. Thach indicated the talks will resume in the future.