U.S. Sees Lengthy Hostage Dealings : Intense Diplomatic Efforts Going On; FBI Concludes Marine’s Death Likely

The Bush Administration settled in Monday for a potentially lengthy siege of waiting and working to secure the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon, as experts concluded that the hanged man shown in a videotape last week was almost certainly hostage William R. Higgins.

With Higgins’ death apparently confirmed and no immediate death threats pending against the eight remaining American hostages in Lebanon, the situation appears on the surface to have returned to the uncomfortable stalemate that prevailed before Lebanese Shiite Muslim militants threatened nine days ago to begin killing their captives.

Beneath the surface, however, intensive diplomatic efforts are continuing in an effort to avoid that kind of impasse. But Administration officials conceded Monday that they see few signs of swift movement.

‘Longer Rather Than Shorter’

President Bush is “cautiously optimistic,” said spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, but “it’s probably going to be a longer period of time rather than shorter.”

“I think we’re still in the pre-bargaining phase, in which signals are being sent,” said one senior counterterrorism official. “We’re still a long way away from actual negotiations, much less a breakthrough.”

And a United Nations envoy who met Monday with leaders of the militant Hezbollah movement said that a solution to the hostage problem will require a lengthy process of “quiet and patient diplomacy.”

Early in the day, Bush delivered an emotional tribute to Higgins, his voice cracking as he saluted the Marine officer during a ceremony marking the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the War Department, the forerunner of the Department of Defense.

“We cannot leave here today without pausing to salute one who stands as a symbol of the courage that burns in the breast of every American in uniform, one Marine who has been very much in our thoughts, Lt. Col. Higgins, William Richard Higgins,” Bush told an audience at Ft. Myer, Va.

And after FBI forensics experts all but confirmed Higgins’ death, Bush called his widow, Maj. Robin Higgins, “to offer his support and encouragement,” Fitzwater said in a statement. “The President said the U.S. government will continue to do all it can to obtain a full accounting of what happened to her husband.”

After a week of studying the videotape, FBI experts reported that “numerous observable characteristics were noted indicating that the person depicted in the videotape is Lt. Col. Higgins,” the bureau said in a statement. The statement stopped just short of stating that Higgins’ death is definite because his body has not been obtained, an FBI official said.

The studies, however, still have not answered a key question about Higgins’ death: When was he killed?

Hanged in Retaliation

Higgins’ captors said he was hanged July 31 in retaliation for Israel’s seizure three days earlier of Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, a Shiite clergyman tied to radical groups in Lebanon.

But U.S. and other Western intelligence organizations suspect that Higgins may have been killed months ago, perhaps even soon after U.S. missiles downed an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf last year. Higgins’ captors could have killed him earlier and made the videotape to be released later when it would be politically useful, U.S. analysts have suggested.

Most recently, the primary desire of the militants who hold hostages in Lebanon has been to win Obeid’s release. Administration officials continue to hope that Israel may be able to negotiate a deal in which Obeid and other Israeli prisoners could be swapped for three Israeli soldiers as well as the eight Americans believed still held hostage in Lebanon.

They have seen some encouraging signs, including an article in an Iranian newspaper aligned with pragmatic factions within the government stating that “‘Iran believes all hostages . . . should be immediately released.”

Similarly, in Lebanon a senior United Nations envoy said after meeting with Hezbollah leaders that “certain tendencies, certain trends in the international climate . . . suggest that circumstances may be more conducive to a settlement to the hostages problem now than they have been sometime in the past.”

“It’s a very difficult and very complicated problem in which there are a large number of elements and a large number of players involved,” said Marrack Goulding, U.N. undersecretary general for peacekeeping operations. Goulding left Beirut on Monday to return to New York after five days of meetings.

Also in Beirut, Algeria’s ambassador to Lebanon, Khaled Hasnawi, met with senior Muslim leaders. Algeria has played a key role in mediating past hostage releases, and President Bush last week spoke with Algerian President Chadli Bendjedid to ask for his country’s help.

“Both sides are still groping for a channel with which they can both be comfortable,” said a senior Administration official. The United States has relied on Japanese and Swiss envoys as the main conduits for official communication, while using the Algerians as middlemen in both Lebanon and Iran.

The official said the Iranians have relayed messages through the Algerians and other governments that he would not identify. He said there is strong speculation that Algeria may become the leading channel for mediation, a role it also played during the 1979-81 hostage crisis in Tehran. The official said Algeria probably would be the second choice of both the United States and Iran and therefore an acceptable compromise.

Despite the encouraging developments, a high-ranking U.S. diplomatic official was guarded in his assessment. “The Iranians, as they have in the past, have used different channels to send different messages,” the official said. Some of the messages “are encouraging, others less so.”

So far, the official noted, there has been no single, authoritative message from Iran on which the U.S. government could rely.

In the absence of a direct channel to Iran, officials are wary of being whipsawed by purported middlemen, each bearing a different set of demands. Officials also worry that if the United States appears too eager to open talks, Iran’s government and the Shiite militants in Lebanon may begin to escalate their demands.

So far, for example, the captors in their public statements have called for release of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. In the past, however, some of the same groups have demanded release of Shiite prisoners held in Kuwait since a series of bombings in 1983. And the faction that held Higgins in the past has called for the release of Mohammed Ali Hamadi, who was convicted earlier this year of involvement in the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner.

“We’ve gotten burned when we jumped at words in the past,” a senior Administration official said. “This time . . . we’ll have to be patient and consistent, which we haven’t always been.”

Bush, after spending considerable time on the phone last week calling world leaders asking for their help, is now leaving diplomatic efforts to the State Department.

Times staff writers James Gerstenzang, Norman Kempster and Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story.