Hezbollah Chief Denies He Spoke on Hostage Talks

The spiritual leader of the militant Hezbollah movement in Lebanon on Monday denied an Arab press report that quoted him as saying the kidnapers of Western hostages had made proposals for their release.

The Beirut information office of Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah issued a statement declaring that an interview with an Abu Dhabi newspaper on which the report was based had never taken place.

Fadlallah “did not give any interview to the United Arab Emirates newspaper Al Ittihad,” the statement said. “What the paper said about the hostage issue and other subjects is baseless and untrue.”

Al Ittihad, the leading daily in Abu Dhabi, one of the United Arab Emirates, had published Sunday what it said was an interview with Fadlallah in which the Shiite Muslim cleric was quoted as saying, “What has taken place so far is that mediators have presented ideas to the United States according to proposals put forward by the kidnapers.” The article said Fadlallah supplied no details on the proposals.

No Comment From Editor

A senior editor of Al Ittihad, questioned Monday by the British news agency Reuters on Fadlallah’s denial, made no immediate comment.

Fadlallah’s pro-Iranian Hezbollah is an umbrella organization for Lebanese Shiite Muslim fundamentalists. Hezbollah factions have been accused by Western intelligence agencies of kidnaping 14 Westerners still held in Lebanon, including eight Americans. The sheik himself has denied any link between the kidnapers and Hezbollah.

In Beirut on Sunday, one of the reputed Hezbollah factions, which says it holds two Americans and has produced videotapes and still photographs of its captives to authenticate its claim, threatened the lives of the hostages if French warships off Lebanon intervene in the fighting between Christian forces and Syria and its Muslim militia allies.

The Revolutionary Justice Organization, which announced and then suspended a death sentence against university official Joseph J. Cicippio as the hostage crisis mounted two weeks ago, said the lives of Cicippio and a fellow American captive, Edward A. Tracy, would be jeopardized by any French military moves in Lebanon.

‘Any Stupid Action’

“America, which masterminds French actions, should bear in mind that any stupid action by the French fleet will endanger the lives of the captives,” the Hezbollah faction said in a statement given to Beirut news agencies and accompanied by a photograph of Tracy, 55, a writer and book salesman.

In dispatching a frigate and subsequently the aircraft carrier Foch and a second frigate over the past 10 days, French President Francois Mitterrand announced that the action was related to “humanitarian concerns.”

“The mission of the ships is a mission of protection,” Mitterrand said over the weekend. “There are thousands of French (nationals) in Lebanon who, if there is no cease-fire, could find themselves in peril of death.”

No French Hostages

No French citizens are currently held by Muslim kidnapers in Lebanon, and the Paris government therefore is considered to have more military flexibility in the crisis than either the Americans or the British, whose captive nationals present political problems in Washington and London.

In its Monday editions, the Iranian newspaper Abrar, urging Western restraint, commented: “To prevent foreign intervention, a lever in the hands of Lebanon’s Muslim combatants (is) the susceptibility of Western governments vis-a-vis the hostage issue.”