Officials Firm: No Deals With Terrorists

Although welcoming the release of Father Lawrence M. Jenco by his Lebanese Muslim captors, U.S. officials and various experts Sunday stressed that the United States should continue refusing to negotiate with terrorists for the release of American hostages remaining in Lebanon.

“We’ve always been ready to talk about the safety and release of the hostages, but we will not compromise with terrorists,” said a State Department spokesman who requested anonymity. “Once we start--if we make these kinds of deals--we will only encourage future terrorists. We are making efforts--all possible efforts--to get the release of the others. But by their nature, these efforts must be confidential.”

The State Department is “trying to study” a videotaped message by hostage David P. Jacobsen, which Jenco brought out of captivity, “trying to analyze what he is saying,” the official said, adding, “We haven’t had a chance to talk to Father Jenco yet.”

Willingness to Talk

Former Under Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, speaking on ABC-TV’s “This Week With David Brinkley,” said:

“I think there ought to be a perfect willingness to talk and to talk with the captors of these particular people. Negotiations, I do think, is a different thing. I get back to saying: Negotiations about what? We’re going to get these people back, but only at the price of requiring either the Kuwaitis to do something or the Israelis to get off the West Bank. It seems to me that the answer here is that there is a limit to what we can do.”

A continuing demand of the terrorists holding the Americans in Lebanon has been the release of 17 Arabs held by Kuwait for having bombed the U.S. and French embassies in that Persian Gulf nation. On the videotape, Jacobsen expressed impatience over Washington’s failure to free him and the others, and he urged his government to negotiate with his captors, who call themselves Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War).

Eagleburger added: “The fact of the matter is, when the United State negotiates with terrorists and gives in to their demands, it simply leads to more pain and more anguish with people they attack in the future.”

Former U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, also speaking on the ABC program, said she believes that the Syrian government “has been and almost surely is deeply involved with the people who are holding the American hostages.”

She added: “We are grateful for whatever the government of Syria does, but it is reasonable to expect that they would do a very great deal more, and could if they chose to do so.”

Jenco’s captors freed him in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon, and the Syrian military turned him over to U.S. officials in Damascus. Syria, however, has said its influence with various Lebanese Muslim terrorist groups is limited.

L. Bruce Laingen, former charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and one of 52 Americans held for 444 days in the Iranian capital six years ago, told ABC that if he had the opportunity to speak to Jacobsen, “I would say ‘your government is caring, your government is doing its damnedest to try to reach those captors.’ ”

He continued: “We get hooked on this term negotiations. Negotiations obviously involve talking. But talking doesn’t necessarily involve giving up the store. . . . Talking opens up all sorts of opportunities. . . . “

Jacobsen, 55, is director of the hospital at the American University of Beirut. The other American hostages are Thomas Sutherland, 55, dean of the university’s School of Agriculture, and Terry A. Anderson, 38, chief Mideast correspondent for the Associated Press. A fourth hostage, William Buckley, a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, was reported killed by his captors last year, but his body has not been found.

Responding to the Jacobsen tape, his son and Sutherland’s daughter expressed relief that their fathers are apparently alive and in good health, but both expressed the hope that the U.S. government will be more flexible in dealing with their captors.

Son Comments

Paul Jacobsen, also speaking on ABC, said, “I think it’s very important that (Washington officials) make the overtures for that conversation . . . that they try to set up a meeting and not simply sit back and wait for contact to be made by the captors.”

In the view of Sutherland’s daughter Joan, “ . . . if they do negotiate, maybe all hell will break loose and people will start taking Americans everywhere--but then again, maybe they won’t.”