Reagan Refuses to Put Pressure on Kuwaitis to Facilitate Swap

President Reagan said Friday that he won’t pressure the Kuwaiti government to exchange 17 terrorist prisoners for Americans held hostage in Lebanon because that “would only encourage other terrorists elsewhere in the world to take American hostages whenever they believe that American pressure on a foreign government would be useful.”

Defending his Administration’s policy of refusing to detail what it has done to win the release of the American hostages, Reagan told the Associated Press Managing Editors in a letter that publicity “tends both to increase the incentive for the captors to retain the hostages and to discourage third parties who might be helpful in resolving the situation but who wish to remain shielded from public recognition.”

APME President James F. Daubel, who had invited Reagan’s response to charges by hostage families that the Administration wasn’t doing enough, questioned the President’s commitment to freeing the Americans and appealed to Reagan “to redouble the efforts and increase the intensity . . . to bring this matter to a conclusion.”

Later in the day, the APME passed a resolution urging Reagan to renew and step up his efforts to secure the release of the hostages.

Reagan, in one of his most detailed explanations to date of the Administration’s position regarding the hostages, told Daubel that he is sorry he was unable to address the editors but wanted to respond before their annual conference concluded Friday afternoon.

Reagan reiterated his Administration’s willingness to talk to the hostages’ captors, “either through direct talks with the kidnapers (or their representatives) or through third parties” but insisted “we cannot and will not concede” to their extortion demands.

Willing to Talk

“Up to the present time, the kidnapers of William Buckley (whose slaying was reported last October but still has not been confirmed), Terry Anderson, David Jacobsen and Thomas Sutherland have made one and only one consistent demand: the release of the 17 convicted prisoners who have been tried and convicted in Kuwaiti courts for the deadly bombings of the U.S. and French embassies and four Kuwaiti facilities on Dec. 12, 1983,” Reagan said. “Six people died, and 86 were wounded in these attacks, which were designed to inflict massive casualties.”