Iran Asks Release of Assets for Aid in Freeing Hostages

Hashemi Rafsanjani, Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, said Tuesday that Iran is prepared to use its influence in Lebanon to try to free American hostages if the Reagan Administration will release Iranian assets frozen in the United States.

Rafsanjani, who is considered the second most powerful man in Iran after the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said on Tehran television that his government wants the United States to make a “tangible gesture” toward Iran.

“I have said several times that the United States took a hostile attitude toward Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution,” Rafsanjani said. “Direct talks with the United States make no sense as long as this condition exists.”

Release of the frozen assets would be one step toward proving that the United States is no longer belligerent, Rafsanjani said in a clear message to the Administration.

In Washington, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, asked to comment on Rafsanjani’s remarks, told reporters: “We will not negotiate or pay ransom for hostages. No deals.”

At the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador Vernon A. Walters also had a response to Rafsanjani. “The United States doesn’t pay ransom,” he said, “but we’re willing to listen.”

On Monday, a reporter had asked President Reagan if he was “ready to talk to Iran about the hostages.” The President replied: “If they’re willing and ready to talk, it’s time.”

Rafsanjani’s latest proposal is identical to one he put forth in November, 1986, after it was disclosed in Washington that the United States had sent arms to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages in Lebanon. The freeing of three Americans at the time removed any lingering doubt that Iran, at least indirectly, controlled the fate of the hostages.

Rafsanjani did not spell out Tuesday what assets Iran wants released, but in 1986 he said arms and other goods that had been ordered and paid for by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi before his ouster in 1979--and never delivered--were worth $1 billion.

The shipments were held up by President Jimmy Carter after Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November, 1979. Carter froze about $9 billion in Iranian assets in the United States, but the assets were freed in 1981 after the embassy hostages were released.

Under settlement orders by an international claims tribunal set up after the resolution of the embassy hostage crisis, the United States has returned hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen assets to Iran. The tribunal is considering another $2.5 billion worth of Iranian claims.

The United States has continued to balk at delivering arms bought by the shah, in part because of a policy of not supplying weapons to either party in the Iran-Iraq War.

At the United Nations on Tuesday, where Iran and Iraq are due to begin indirect peace talks today, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati--in response to a reporter’s question about Iran’s possible use of its influence to help free U.S. hostages in Lebanon--said: “The question is related to the Lebanese.”

Commenting as he emerged from a second 1 1/2-hour meeting with U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, Velayati added: “But on the basis of the humanitarian aspect, we will do our best, as we have done until now. All innocent people should be free.”

Times staff writer Don Shannon at the United Nations contributed to this article.