Reports on Waite Contradictory

Contradictory reports on missing Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite continued to proliferate Thursday, with a West German newspaper reporting he had been shot and wounded and two Beirut taxi drivers saying they had seen him walking in a Beirut suburb.

The newspaper Bild, citing “Beirut security circles,” said Waite was critically wounded when a guard opened fire on him with a machine gun when the envoy tried to flee the room where he was being held.

But in Beirut, a senior militia official promptly denied the report.

“It is not true,” he said. “Anyway, Waite is too smart to attempt any escape, and he cannot escape.”

Bild, a Hamburg-based mass-circulation newspaper, did not say when or where the alleged shooting occurred. It provided no further details in its four-sentence report.

Church Rejects Story

In London, the Church of England called the Bild report “sensationalist.”

“We have had absolutely no confirmation of this report, and we have very good sources in Beirut,” a church spokeswoman said. “That newspaper called me at a quarter past 6. They were very hesitant. They had no sourcing.”

In Beirut, the two taxi drivers said they saw Waite walking in a southern Beirut suburb Thursday with an escort of about 10 gunmen and four turbaned Shia Muslim sheiks.

Waite, the 6-foot-7 personal envoy of Archbishop of Canterbury Robert A. K. Runcie, has not contacted the church or his family since leaving his hotel Jan. 20. He had arrived in Beirut on Jan. 12 to help negotiate the release of foreign hostages.

The taxi drivers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told an Associated Press reporter that they saw Waite walking with his escorts in a street close to the Lebanese capital’s airport highway at about 3 p.m. Thursday.

‘Smiling and Waving’

“I saw him smiling and waving his hand to onlookers as he walked. He wore a gray raincoat,” said one witness. “I stopped my taxicab to watch, but the escorts waved me away, shouting: ‘Don’t stop. Drive on.’ I did.”

Another taxi driver said he saw Waite at the same time in the same procession, smiling and waving his right arm to onlookers on the left side of the street.

Both drivers work in the neighborhood of the Riviera Hotel, where Waite stayed between his arrival in Lebanon and the time he dropped from sight.

The taxi drivers said that before Waite’s disappearance, they had frequently seen him walking on the beach or traveling in a motorcade.

“I haven’t the slightest doubt about his identity. I know him and I saw him this afternoon,” one driver said.

Reports Disputed

But Kabalan Kabalan, a senior security official in the powerful Shia Muslim Amal militia, said the cab drivers’ reports are “absolutely unbelievable.”

“How could kidnapers just take their hostage in public and let people see him? In the science of security, such a thing is out of the question. No militia would dare take its hostage in public and escort him in the streets,” he said.

As for the alleged shooting, White House spokesman Dan Howard said in Washington, “We have no independent confirmation.”

On Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia took the chamber’s floor to read a news account of the unconfirmed report.

Reporters in Beirut asked members of Shia Muslim groups and Lebanese security officials about the shooting report but were unable to confirm it.

“It’s absolute fantasy,” said one militia official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “My people know he is held by the group with which he had been talking about the hostages. But he is alive. He has not been shot or maltreated.”

Asked how he could be so certain, he said: “We have our own ways and contacts. We know he has not been shot.”