Won’t Trade for Hostage, Shamir Says : Calls Demand to Free 100 Arabs for Sick American Blackmail

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, saying Israel does not deal with blackmailers, today rejected negotiations with a Lebanese group that offered to swap am American hostage for 100 Arabs held by Israel.

“It is clear that this is blackmail, and we won’t enter into talks with these types of organizations,” Shamir told reporters.

Asked if Israel would hold to its policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists despite the kidnapers’ claim that the hostage, Alann Steen, 47, is sick and may die within 10 days, Shamir said:

“It’s not our fault. We would like to help him, but I don’t think we can help him by (negotiating an exchange).”

Peres Less Categorical

Shamir made his remarks after speaking to the Holocaust Children’s Memorial Fund, a new international Jewish organization.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was less categorical.

He told reporters today, “We are not negotiating or looking for negotiations of this type.”

Later he told about 200 high school students that “in general, I believe there should not be exchanges of hostages for terrorists.”

But Peres added that “life is full of contradictions” and room for exceptions existed if Israeli military personnel were involved.

Military Personnel Different

“If there are people sent by the Israeli army . . . beyond enemy lines, and they fall prisoner to the terrorists, the country cannot rest even a moment until they are brought back home.

“And in the absence of military means to free them, other means should be checked,” Peres said. “I wouldn’t make it a rule. The rule is not to bargain, but there is definitely room for an exception when we are talking about the conditions I described.”

An Israeli navigator, shot down over the south Lebanon city of Sidon last October, is held by the Lebanese Shia Muslim militia Amal.

Israel’s longstanding policy has been not to negotiate with terrorists. But this was abandoned for a series of lopsided exchanges with Palestinian groups in Lebanon.

In November, 1983, Israel freed 4,000 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners in exchange for six Israeli soldiers. In May, 1985, about 1,050 prisoners were released for three Israeli soldiers.

Became Ill in Captivity

A statement delivered Monday to a Beirut newspaper and signed by the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine said that Steen, from Boston, had become ill in captivity and could die within 10 days.

Steen was one of four teachers abducted from the West Beirut campus of Beirut University College on Jan. 24 by gunmen posing as police.

The group’s statement, which was accompanied by a photograph of Robert Polhill, one of the abducted teachers, said the kidnapers would free Steen if the United States persuaded Israel to free 100 detainees.

“If these terrorists pretend that the man is sick, then they must release him immediately and unconditionally for humanitarian reasons,” Avi Pazner, a spokesman for Shamir, said in a telephone interview.

“These kidnapings have nothing to do with Israel,” Pazner said when asked if Israel would consider the group’s demand. “Israel has a longstanding policy of not negotiating with terrorists.”