House Panel Cool to Payments for Iran Air Victims : Airbus Compensation ‘Tough Sell’

In a strong bipartisan signal, House Armed Services Committee members warned the Reagan Administration on Thursday that it faces stiff obstacles in selling Congress on the idea of compensating families of the victims of last month’s downing of an Iranian airliner.

Committee members demanded that the Administration prove that the United States was largely to blame in the July 3 incident, that the money will reach the 290 victims’ families rather than the Iranian government and that Iran might respond by helping free U.S. hostages in Lebanon and settling its eight-year war with Iraq.

Even then, committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) said at a hearing, President Reagan will have a “tough sell,” given that “visceral reaction against the Iranian government runs deep.”

But Defense and State Department officials, testifying before the panel, stood firm on Reagan’s vague proposal to give the survivors ex gratia payments--”out of grace” and compassion, rather than because of legal liability.

The White House announced three weeks ago that Reagan had approved the idea of cash payments to the families as “the right thing to do,” in light of the fact that the U.S. cruiser Vincennes shot down the jetliner, an Iran Air Airbus A-300, after mistakenly concluding that it was a hostile fighter jet.

At the time, some congressional leaders appeared receptive to the gesture. But the strong criticisms expressed by both Republicans and Democrats on the Armed Services Committee indicated that firm opposition to compensation is coalescing in Congress.

Several polls have indicated that the American public, by a small majority, opposes compensation.

Politically Unpopular

Administration officials who testified did not address whether Reagan could order the payments without congressional approval. Even if he could directly commit money from the claims funds maintained at the Pentagon and other agencies, such a unilateral move might be politically unpopular, some officials believe.

John H. McNeill, assistant general counsel at the Pentagon, testified that it is “increasingly likely” that the Administration will ask Congress to authorize payments, the possible amount of which has not yet been detailed. If a proposal is presented, the House Armed Services Committee would play a key role in the review.

“While I support the President generally, I totally oppose what he’s doing here,” Rep. W. Curtis Weldon (R-Pa.) said. “He’s on the wrong side of the issue.”

Rep. Larry J. Hopkins (R-Ky.) told the Administration officials, “I have some real deep-seated problems . . . with what you’re trying to do.” He questioned “why we want to be so compassionate” toward a country that “has killed Americans, has maimed Americans. . . . I remain unconvinced.”

The ranking Republican on the committee, Rep. William L. Dickinson of Alabama, cited a “double standard” between the $75,000-per-person compensation that could be paid under a Warsaw Convention international flights agreement and a $20,000 limit that he said Iranian law would dictate under similar circumstances.

But Abraham D. Sofaer, legal adviser to the State Department, refused in testimony to speculate on what the payments might be, except to say that “we’re certainly not thinking about anything like” the $800,000-per-person the Administration is seeking for the 37 sailors killed in the 1987 Iraqi attack on the U.S. frigate Stark.

In emotional testimony Wednesday in favor of compensation, the sister-in-law of the pilot of Iran Air Flight 655 had implored the committee not to allow the compensation issue to become entangled in the many disputes between Iran and the United States.

“Such linkage assumes that the government in Tehran cares about the victims. If you really believe this gives you some leverage, with Iran, I think you might regret it,” Nahid Sadeghi of Norman, Okla., said.

She instead urged congressmen to put aside their images of “crazy” Iranians, shaking their fists and chanting “Death to America,” and to instead consider the survivors who must live with the disaster, like her 5-year-old niece.

“I don’t know how the family can tell her that it was an American missile that killed her father,” she said. “But we will eventually have to tell her. I hope and pray that she will understand there was no malice.”