Hostage Waite’s Brother Optimistic

The brother of Anglican church envoy Terry Waite said Sunday that he is optimistic about the eventual release of his brother and other hostages in Lebanon because of events this year in Britain, Iran and the United States.

David Waite said he was encouraged by the election of a new Iranian president, the inauguration of a new U.S. President and a letter he received recently from British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd that outlined an avenue for improved Anglo-Iranian relations.

“I felt it was quite an important letter because he was saying in fact that as long as Iran was ready to use her influence to secure the release of Terry and the other hostages, Britain would look to improve their relationships with Iran,” Waite said in a BBC radio interview.

Citing the new administrations of Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and President Bush as well as Hurd’s letter, he said: “So there has been a lot of change and a lot of hope, I feel, for the future.”

Waite, 50, the special envoy of Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie, disappeared Jan. 20, 1987, after leaving his Beirut hotel to negotiate with the Shiite fundamentalist group Islamic Jihad for the release of two American hostages.