Bid for Talks on U.S. Hostages Rejected

A group of Muslim extremists holding three Americans hostage in Lebanon said Saturday that their captives would make a statement “to the American people” soon and released a photograph of one of them, but they spurned Anglican envoy Terry Waite’s bid for a renewal of negotiations for their release.

The statement by the pro-Iranian group, Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War), was accompanied by a black-and-white photograph of American hostage David P. Jacobsen of Huntington Beach, Calif., and sent to the An Nahar newspaper in Beirut. The photograph of Jacobsen was similar to one sent to the newspaper along with another message on Aug. 3.

The statement by Islamic Jihad criticized Reagan Administration policy toward “the defenders of freedom, dignity and Islam.”

“They (the Americans) should know that continuing this policy . . . will not resolve the question of the hostage . . . but threatens of grave consequences,” the statement went on.

The statement said Secretary of State George P. Shultz had been the spokesman for the American policy and added, “The hostages have a position on what Shultz has said that we shall publish in the near future in a letter from the hostages to the American people.”

The statement did not elaborate on what Shultz was purported to have said.

In addition to Jacobsen, 54, who was director of the American University Hospital when he was kidnaped May 28, 1985, Islamic Jihad holds Associated Press correspondent Terry A. Anderson, 38, and Thomas Sutherland, 55, dean of the American University of Beirut’s school of agriculture.

Islamic Jihad also claimed responsibility for the kidnaping and killing of U.S. Embassy political officer William Buckley, 56. His body has never been recovered.

Meanwhile, a private Beirut news agency reported Saturday that it had received information that Anderson is ill and confined to bed in captivity. The Central Information Agency, which is owned by three Lebanese Christian journalists, citing security sources it did not identify in the report, said that Anderson’s captors “have managed to provide him with the medicines he requested.” The agency said the other hostages are “in good health.”

The account also could not be independently verified. In Washington, the White House and State Department said no such information had reached them on Anderson’s condition.

Response to Waite

In Saturday’s message, the group rejected an appeal by Waite to meet the captors and mediate the release of the hostages. Waite, the special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert A.K. Runcie, has made several trips to Lebanon in an effort to secure the release of foreign hostages.

“As for those who seek to solve the hostages’ issue, and who issue repeated publicity appeals, you know exactly what our demands are and how they can be achieved, so why don’t you take a categoric action towards the solution ?” the statement said.

“Why make all these empty publicity appeals?” the statement added in apparent reference to Waite.

Islamic Jihad has previously demanded that Kuwait release 17 comrades imprisoned for bombing the U.S. and French embassies and government buildings in that Persian Gulf country in 1983. Kuwait has refused to meet the demand.