2 Hostages Chide Reagan; They’re Coerced, He Says : Tape Cites Effort Made for Daniloff

Two American hostages in a videotape released today made an impassioned plea to the Reagan Administration to work as hard for the release of U.S. captives in Lebanon as it did for Nicholas Daniloff and complained of “2 1/2 years of empty talk and refusal to act.”

An angry President Reagan, boarding a copter to Camp David, Md., told newsmen on the White House lawn that he suspected the hostages, Terry Anderson and David Jacobsen, were acting under coercion.

Islamic Jihad, which holds three Americans hostage, released the 10-minute tape and a statement, which were made available to Western news agencies. There was no way to know whether the men willingly wrote their statements.

‘There Is No Comparison’

“I have a feeling that they were doing this under the orders of their captors,” Reagan told the reporters on the White House lawn.

He said “there is no comparison” between Daniloff and the hostages in Lebanon.

“In one we were dealing with a government that had under its laws arrested one of our citizens (Daniloff). . . . We were able to get him back,” Reagan said.

In the case of the hostages in Lebanon, he said, “We don’t know who’s holding them.”

Reagan added, “There has never been a day that we have not been trying every channel to get our hostages back from Lebanon. But they were not seized by a government. We don’t know who’s holding them. There’s never been any contact between their captors and us.”

First Appearance

Today was the first time Anderson, 38, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, appeared in a videotape since his abduction in Muslim West Beirut 1 1/2 years ago. Fellow hostage Jacobsen of the American University Hospital said on the tape that their hardships had increased in recent weeks.

On the tape, Anderson referred by name to Islamic Jihad’s third American hostage, Thomas Sutherland of the American University of Beirut, but there was no explanation why he did not appear on the videotape.

Both Anderson and Jacobsen briefly mentioned the “murder” of another American, William Buckley, a U.S. diplomat whom Islamic Jihad, thought to be a group of pro-Iranian Shia Muslim extremists, has claimed to have killed.

Read in Steady Voices

The two captives read separately from prepared statements in steady, even tones.

They bitterly compared their situation to that of Daniloff, the U.S. News & World Report correspondent held for a month on espionage charges in Moscow before intensive efforts by the U.S. government secured his release Monday.

In Florida today, Daniloff made an emotional appeal on Anderson’s behalf. (Story on Page 2.)

In the videotape, Anderson asked: “How can any official justify the interest, attention and action given in that case and the inattention given ours?” Like Jacobsen, he appeared pale but physically fit.

“After 2 1/2 years of empty talk and refusal to act on the part of the Reagan Administration, it hurts to see the propaganda and bombast with which that Administration solved the problem of Mr. Daniloff,” Anderson said in his three-minute address.

Appeal for Action

Jacobsen, 55, in a statement addressed to President Reagan, asked: “Don’t we also deserve the recognition, the respect and the honorable treatment by the United States government? Don’t we deserve the same attention and protection that you gave Daniloff?”

Daniloff was allowed to leave Moscow after the superpowers struck a deal that included the release of Gennady F. Zakharov, a Soviet U.N. employee charged in New York with spying.

“We are surprised that the American government has put pressure on other Arab and European governments not to negotiate in such cases as ours, but surrendered itself on the Daniloff case, releasing the Russian spy Zakharov who was working against our people,” Anderson said.

Sister Half-Expected Move

Anderson’s sister Peggy Say said from her home in Batavia, N.Y., “Terry hasn’t made tapes in the past, and I was wondering how long it would take him to get angry enough to consent to make a tape. I half-expected it.”

Jacobsen said “the conditions of our captivity are very bad. They are far worse now than when Father (Lawrence Martin) Jenco was with us. Truly they are bad.” Jenco, a former hostage, was freed July 26 after being held 19 months.

Jacobsen opened his appeal by saying the tape was made Thursday.