Would Aid Hostages for Price, Iran Official Says : Parliament Speaker Also Says That McFarlane Made Secret Trip in Attempt to Free Americans

A senior Iranian official Tuesday offered Iran’s help in freeing the remaining American and French hostages in Lebanon, provided that the United States and France agree to settle financial claims and unblock the shipments of arms bought by Iran before the Islamic revolution.

The official, Iran’s Speaker of Parliament Hashemi Rafsanjani, also said that a U.S. delegation headed by Robert C. McFarlane, President Reagan’s former national security adviser, visited Tehran secretly last month in a bid to enlist the country’s help in securing the release of the hostages.

Under House Arrest

McFarlane and the four other Americans arrived on a flight carrying military equipment and brought a message from Reagan seeking improved relations, Rafsanjani said. The Americans were put under house arrest in their hotel for five days and then expelled from Iran, Rafsanjani asserted.

His remarks were interpreted as an effort to discredit reports published in the Arab world Monday that Iran had already worked out a secret deal with Washington that would trade American arms for Iran’s assistance in persuading Muslim extremists in Lebanon to release the hostages. The hostages include at least five Americans, six French nationals and several other foreigners.

In Washington, U.S. officials initially refused to comment on Rafsanjani’s remarks, which were reported by Iran’s official news agency and monitored in Cyprus. That fueled speculation in Washington and throughout the Middle East that the United States had lifted its arms embargo on Iran in order to win the hostages’ freedom.

But, late in the day, the White House announced that the seven-year-old U.S. arms embargo remained in place. “As long as Iran advocates the use of terrorism, the U.S. arms embargo will continue,” presidential spokesman Larry Speakes told reporters aboard Air Force One as it returned President Reagan from California to Washington.

The United States suspended relations with Iran after militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, and took 66 hostages, eventually holding 52 of them for 14 months.

In recent years, the Administration’s rigid enforcement of the embargo has led the government of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to turn to the international black market in a desperate search for spare parts to maintain the U.S.-built planes, tanks and other equipment that had been sold to Iran before the ouster of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

‘No Winners or Losers’

On Tuesday, Speakes said “the U.S. position on the Iran-Iraq War remains that the fighting should stop and the two sides should reach a negotiated settlement of their dispute. We favor an outcome where there are no winners or losers.”

Neither White House nor State Department spokesmen would comment on Rafsanjani’s contention that McFarlane had visited Tehran recently. McFarlane could not be reached for comment, and a spokesman at his office at the private Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington declined to discuss the report.

But a U.S. government official who is a close friend of McFarlane said a mission to Tehran would run counter to the former adviser’s position on the hostages. The official said had been adamantly opposed to arranging any deal to secure the hostages’ freedom and, thus, he did not believe McFarlane was involved in any such effort.

“Bud has had absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing to do with this,” the source said of McFarlane. “Somebody’s trying to frame him.”

Denies Trip Was Made

When asked specifically whether McFarlane had made a trip to Iran, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “I know that that did not happen.”

Addressing a Tehran rally on the seventh anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Iran, Rafsanjani said that, as a “humanitarian gesture,” Iran would consider using its influence to gain the release of the hostages in return for U.S. and French pledges to cease all “hostile acts” against Iran.

According to the Iranian news agency, Rafsanjani cited France’s refusal to settle Iranian financial claims and a freeze by the United States on the shipment of arms purchased by the late Shah of Iran, but never delivered, as examples of what Iran considered “hostile acts.”

Regarding Iran’s financial claims, France announced last week that it had reached an agreement with Iran on paying back some of the $1 billion that the French Atomic Energy Commission borrowed from Iran 12 years ago.

Rafsanjani also said the United States and France must persuade Israel to meet “the demands of the oppressed Muslims of Lebanon”--an apparent reference to calls for the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israel--as another condition for Iran’s help. However, he later indicated that proof of U.S. and French willingness to cease all “meaningless hostile acts” against Iran would be enough to induce his government to intervene in the hostage issue.

Humanitarian Gesture

“If you (the United States and France) prove that you are not hostile towards us, or at least do not act on your hostility, as a humanitarian gesture we will let our friends in Lebanon know our views,” Rafsanjani told the rally outside the Iranian Parliament in Tehran.

Iran maintains close ties with several of the terrorist groups in Lebanon that claim to be holding foreign hostages. One of those groups, calling itself Islamic Jihad, released American hospital administrator David P. Jacobsen on Sunday and indicated that it would be willing to free two other Americans it is holding if certain “approaches” undertaken by the Reagan Administration are carried out.

Rafsanjani acknowledged these ties, saying that while “our friends in Lebanon . . . do not owe us anything, they sometimes listen to us.”

The American hostages in Lebanon include Terry A. Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent of the Associated Press; Thomas Sutherland, dean of agriculture at the American University of Beirut; Joseph J. Cicippio, chief accountant of the American University Hospital in Beirut; Frank H. Reed, director of the Lebanese International School, and Edward A. Tracy, a book salesman.

Kidnaped by Others

Anderson and Sutherland were kidnaped last year by Islamic Jihad and were held with Jacobsen, he has indicated. The other three Americans were kidnaped in recent months by other terrorist groups.

In recent weeks, efforts to free the hostages have focused on the captives held by Islamic Jihad. Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite, who has acted as a go-between in some of these negotiations and who was instrumental in obtaining Jacobsen’s release, said Tuesday that he expected to know within 24 hours whether Islamic Jihad is willing to release Anderson and Sutherland.

“I have contacts with the captors of these two,” Waite told reporters in Wiesbaden, West Germany, where he flew with Jacobsen on Monday. “These are the two people specifically in my sights. That’s where our best chances lie at the moment.”

Waite, who has been working to help free the hostages for the past year, indicated that he may return to Beirut in a day or two if he gets a favorable response from his contacts in Lebanon.

Role of Go-Between

While acknowledging Waite’s role as a go-between, the Reagan Administration has said that it has been holding “intensive discussions with various parties who could be helpful” in obtaining the hostages’ release.

These negotiations have been shrouded in secrecy, but speculation about the identities of the principal parties involved has focused on Syria and Iran. However, since Jacobsen’s release there have been several indications and reports from the Arab world that the main party has been Iran, which has more influence over Islamic Jihad and other extremist Islamic groups than does Syria, the latter’s heavy-handed military presence in Lebanon notwithstanding.

Movement in the long-dormant hostage crisis has also been linked to a power struggle reportedly taking place in Iran between Rafsanjani’s followers and forces loyal to Mehdi Hashemi, a hard-line anti-American cleric who is the son-in-law of the Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, Khomeini’s designated successor.

Hashemi, who headed the government office in charge of spreading Iran’s Islamic revolution abroad, was arrested recently on charges of murder and treason. Despite Montazeri’s intervention, Information Minister Mohammed Reyshahri has refused to release his son-in-law.

Trying to Improve Ties

It is thought that Reyshahri, along with Rafsanjani and Prime Minister Hussein Moussavi, have tried to improve relations with the United States and secure U.S. spare parts but were strongly opposed by Hashemi.

Rafsanjani, considered one of Iran’s shrewdest politicians, has been a central figure in the maneuverings over the question of who will succeed the 86-year-old Khomeini. He has the support of Iranian President Ali Khamenei and is reportedly opposed by Montazeri and his followers.

The first report that McFarlane had paid a secret visit to Iran appeared Monday in Ash Shiraa, a pro-Syrian weekly magazine published in Beirut.

Quoting sources in Montazeri’s office, the magazine said that McFarlane had negotiated a deal whereby the hostages would be freed in return for an agreement by the United States to supply Iran with the spare military parts it needs to conduct its war with Iraq.

The magazine said that, as a result of those negotiations, the United States has already secretly flown four planeloads of spare military parts to Iran from bases in the Philippines. While in Iran, McFarlane met with officials of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, the Parliament and the army, the magazine said.

Unlikely Embellishment

Rafsanjani’s version of the reported talks with McFarlane differed considerably from this account, and he embellished it with unlikely details that appeared to cast the whole affair in doubt.

He said, for instance, that the McFarlane delegation sneaked into Iran disguised as members of an airline crew and came bearing handguns, a cake in the shape of a key and a Bible inscribed by President Reagan as gifts for the Iranian leadership.

Rafsanjani said the Americans arrived on a plane bringing military spare parts that Iran had ordered from arms merchants in Europe. One of the Americans identified himself as “McFarlane,” Rafsanjani said, adding that he looked like Reagan’s former national security adviser, who resigned last year. He did not say that McFarlane had any connection with the weapons.