U.S. Marine Serving With U.N. Kidnaped in Lebanon

A U.S. Marine officer serving with a United Nations truce-observer force was abducted Wednesday in southern Lebanon.

A Pentagon official in Washington identified the officer as Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, 43, of Danville, Ky. He said Higgins was serving as chief of the U.N. Truce Supervisory Organization (UNTSO) in Lebanon, a 75-man force.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the abduction.

In Jerusalem, a U.N. official, speaking on the condition that he not be identified by name, told the Associated Press that Higgins was returning to his base after conferring in Tyre with Abdel-Majid Saleh, a political leader of the Shia Muslim militia known as Amal.

A U.N. spokesman, Timur Goksel, said Higgins was abducted Wednesday afternoon as he drove along the coastal highway from Tyre toward Naqoura, a town just north of the Israeli border that is the center of U.N. peacekeeping and observer operations in southern Lebanon. It is headquarters for the nine-nation, 5,800-man U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which was set up in 1978 to restore peace and security in the nation after the 1975-76 civil war.

Goksel said Higgins was in a U.N. station wagon, traveling behind a similar vehicle that was carrying two other U.N. observers. He said the lead station wagon rounded a bend in the road and, when its passengers noticed that Higgins’ car was not following, they doubled back and found his car abandoned.

Goksel said that U.N. troops supported by helicopters were searching the area.

An official of the Defense Department in Washington gave a similar account of the abduction. He said 16 Americans are assigned to the observer group but that not all are necessarily in Leba1852796448spokesman, said that six Americans are currently with the group.

Although UNIFIL troops--who have occasionally clashed with Palestinian guerrillas, Lebanese militiamen and Israeli troops--are heavily armed, those attached to UNTSO normally carry only side arms.

Established in 1948

UNTSO was established by the Security Council in 1948 to monitor the cease-fire that went into effect at the end of the Israeli War of Independence. The 299-member force, stationed in various border regions, is commanded by a general, currently a Norwegian.

The area where Higgins was kidnaped in Lebanon is close to the Rashidiyeh Palestinian refugee camp and to several towns populated by Shia Muslims who have recently shown increasing loyalty to Hezbollah (Party of God), a radical Shia militia that is financed and directed by Iran and believed responsible for several terrorist acts against Westerners.

The Associated Press reported from Louisville, Ky., that Higgins was born in central Kentucky, in Garrard County, and later moved to Louisville, where he attended public schools. Relatives said he was appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point but chose instead to enroll at Miami University of Ohio under a Navy ROTC scholarship. Upon graduation in 1967, with a degree in business administration, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. He served in Vietnam, winning the Bronze Star and several other combat medals.

Graduate of Pepperdine

He later acquired two advanced degrees--in human resources management from Pepperdine University, Los Angeles, and in political science from Auburn University in Alabama. His wife, Robin, is a major in the Marine Corps assigned to the Pentagon. They have a daughter, 17, a Pentagon official told United Press International.

Richard P. Sybert, a Los Angeles lawyer who served as special assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger in 1985-86, when Higgins was one of Weinberger’s two military assistants740320357in Lebanon last June, Sybert said, Higgins “knew he was going into a dangerous situation” but was eager for the duty.

Eight other Americans are held hostage in Lebanon, and most of them are believed to be in the hands of Hezbollah. Their abductors have been demanding the release of 17 Lebanese and Iraqi Shia Muslims imprisoned in Kuwait for terrorist offenses.

The U.S. State Department has warned Americans about going to Lebanon. Currently, use of an American passport to travel there is against the law.

State Department officials sought Wednesday to make a distinction between ordinary Americans told not to travel to Lebanon and officers like Higgins assigned to U.N. duty, the Associated Press reported.

“In this particular case, the individual U.S. officer was under the responsibility, authority and control of the United Nations in his role as a member of the U.N. Supervisory Organization,” State Department spokesman Charles Redman said.

Wednesday’s abduction came shortly after a major confrontation between Hezbollah and the Israeli-backed militia known as the South Lebanon Army, which was established by Israel to patrol a so-called security zone between Israel and Lebanon.

A police spokesman said the two sides fought for six hours outside the Christian town of Jezzine, some 10 miles east of Sidon. Initial reports suggested that as many as 16 members of the South Lebanon Army were killed in the clash.