Wife of Hostage Offers to Serve as Intermediary

The wife of hostage Thomas Sutherland offered today to act as intermediary between the U.S. government and the Islamic Jihad organization that holds him and two other Americans captive.

Jean Sutherland, 52, who teaches English at the American University of Beirut, said she hopes to be contacted by members of Islamic Jihad as a first step to “open the door for a dialogue between the two sides.”

She said she will go to the United States soon and hopes to meet with U.S. officials involved in the hostage case.

Peggy Say, sister of American hostage Terry Anderson, on Monday issued an appeal to Islamic Jihad in which she asked the group whom they wanted to negotiate with and offered to go to Beirut.

No Jihad Response

There has been no reported response by Islamic Jihad to Say’s appeal, which was published in Lebanese newspapers and broadcast over radio stations.

Thomas Sutherland, 55, was acting dean of agriculture at the American University of Beirut when he was kidnaped June 9, 1985. Anderson, 38, was chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press when he was kidnaped March 16, 1985.

The third American hostage Islamic Jihad holds in Lebanon is David Jacobsen, 55, of Huntington Beach, Calif., director of the American University hospital, abducted May 28, 1985.

On Friday, Islamic Jihad released videotapes of Anderson and Jacobsen in which they criticized the Reagan Administration for working harder to secure the release from Moscow of U.S. journalist Nicholas Daniloff than for their freedom.

‘Wish and Readiness’

President Reagan said that the captors have never communicated with the United States and that because they are not a government, the Administration doesn’t know whom to approach.

In a statement issued before she met with reporters, Jean Sutherland declared her “wish and readiness to carry out a mediation mission between the (Islamic Jihad) organization and the U.S. Administration to open the door for a dialogue between the two sides.”