BBC Reporter Told Terry Waite Is Alive and Well in Lebanon

A British Broadcasting Corp. reporter in Tehran said today that he has received authoritative assurances that Church of England envoy Terry Waite, who disappeared in Lebanon in January, is alive and well.

Waite, who had gone to Lebanon to negotiate for the release of Westerners held hostage there, is still in Lebanon and “both his captors and the Iranians are anxious to ensure that nothing happens to him,” John Simpson said in a television broadcast from Iran, where he is on assignment.

Simpson said reports that Waite is dead or has been secretly transported to Iran were dismissed in Tehran as “ludicrous.”

Waite is being held in a hide-out in southern Beirut but is moved occasionally to the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon to ensure that Syrian troops in Lebanon did not find him, Simpson quoted an informant as saying.