2 U.N. Employees Kidnaped in Lebanon

Two Scandinavians working for a U.N. relief agency in Lebanon were abducted Friday in the southern part of the country, the international organization reported.

A U.N. spokesman identified the two men as William Jorgensen, 58, of Norway, and Jan Stening, 44, of Sweden. They are attached to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which was established in 1949 to help Palestine refugees in the Near East.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the abduction, but a Palestinian source said the kidnaping was the work of terrorist Abu Nidal’s radical Revolutionary Council of Fatah.

Per Olof Hallquist, UNRWA’s director for Lebanon, said that unless the two men are released immediately, the agency will withdraw its nonessential foreign staff from Lebanon.

‘No Reason’ for Kidnaping

“We don’t have any information on their whereabouts,” Hallquist said in a statement. “We see no reason why these two Swedish and Norwegian citizens are kidnaped in a country where the U.N. is doing a tremendous effort to help.”

The abduction was the first in Lebanon involving Scandinavians, whose relatively neutral politics has given them a measure of immunity from Lebanon’s violence.

Stening and Jorgensen were seized on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese city of Sidon while en route by car to Beirut for a weekend break, according to a U.N. spokesman.

The spokesman said that four gunmen wearing military uniforms and ski masks stopped the U.N. car, which was flying the aquamarine U.N. flag. Stening and Jorgensen were forced at gunpoint to walk to a waiting sedan and were driven away.

Stening and Jorgensen, who arrived in Lebanon last year, were in charge of UNRWA operations in the area around Tyre. The agency provides various kinds of relief to Palestinians in refugee camps. UNRWA records show that there are 32,000 Palestinians in camps in the Tyre area.

Other UNRWA officials have been kidnaped during more than 12 years of civil war in Lebanon, but all were eventually freed unharmed except for Alec Collett, 63, a British free-lance journalist on assignment for the relief agency.

Collett was abducted March 25, 1985, on the southern outskirts of Beirut. A group calling itself the Revolutionary Organization of Socialist Muslims, a pro-Libyan group believed to have links to Abu Nidal, claimed responsibility.

On April 23, 1986, the group claimed that Collett was hanged because of British support for the American bombings of Libyan cities eight days earlier. His body has never been found.

Besides Jorgensen and Stening, 12 other international staff members of UNRWA are assigned at present in Lebanon. However, only one of them, Dr. Ouri Pentti, a Finn who directs medical relief in the refugee camps of Tyre, remains in southern Lebanon. Pentti took refuge at the headquarters of the U.N. peacekeeping force there when news of the abduction reached Tyre, according to news agency reports.

West German Being Held

Ten days ago, a West German national, Ralph Schray, was abducted in Muslim West Beirut, a kidnaping believed to be connected with a trial taking place in West Germany involving a Lebanese Shia Muslim charged in another abduction.

Besides the two Scandinavians, 21 other foreigners are being held prisoner in Lebanon. All are believed to be held by pro-Iranian fundamentalist groups rather than Palestinians.

At UNRWA headquarters in Vienna, Commissioner General Giorgio Giacomelli demanded the immediate release of Stening and Jorgensen.

“These two men were performing a humanitarian task and have been supervising relief operations for thousands of Palestine refugees and other needy people in the Tyre area,” Giacomelli said in a statement.