U.S. Marks Hostage’s 6th Year : Daughter, 4, Pleads for His Release

Terry Anderson’s daughter pleaded for the father she loves but has never known to come home today, the day Anderson began his sixth year as a hostage in Lebanon.

The journalist’s family, friends and colleagues somberly marked the anniversary with commemorations and prayers in Washington, New York and Cyprus. Yellow ribbons fluttered from trees, signs and poles in Anderson’s hometown of Batavia, N.Y.

Anderson, 42, the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, is the longest-held of the American hostages in Lebanon. All told, 18 Westerners are believed to be captives there, including eight Americans.

Former hostages chained themselves to a tree in Paris to protest Anderson’s captivity, and President Bush pledged to work for the hostages’ release. (Photo, P2.)

But no message was as poignant as the one on television this evening in Lebanon.

In a videotape, Anderson’s 4-year-old daughter Sulome appeared, wearing a green coat and riding a bicycle given to her at Christmas in Anderson’s name.

“I got the bike for Christmas, daddy. Thank you,” said Sulome, who was born 83 days after Anderson was seized by a pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim faction in Beirut.

“I love you Daddy, come home, please come home. I love you Daddy. Come home. Send me to the circus,” she beseeched. The videotape was made earlier in the week and shipped to the television stations in Beirut.

Lebanese newspapers also published a letter today signed “Sulome and Madeleine,” from the girl and her mother, Madeleine Bassil, who wait in Cyprus for Anderson’s release.

“The world without God is not the world, it’s hell. A home without a husband or father is not a home, it’s hell,” the letter said.

“I am always wondering if you have ever been able to read the letters sent to you on different occasions, or even if they were read to you to let you know how much we love you and how different and difficult life is without you,” Bassil wrote.

In Washington, Bush pledged to pursue “all legitimate opportunities” to win the release of the hostages.

“I intend to keep open lines of communications with all parties, including Iran, who have influence over hostage-takers,” the President said in a letter to Peggy Say, Anderson’s sister.

Say met privately with Bush and his wife at the White House, then addressed a ceremony across the street at Lafayette Park. Directing her remarks to the captors of her brother thousands of miles away, she said: “You complain that your story has not been told and yet the man who would tell it has been chained to a basement wall for five years. . . .

“I don’t want to punish them. I don’t want to hunt them down. I just want my brother back. But I’m not going to pay them for doing so,” she said.

Bush did not attend the ceremony, but said in a radio interview that “every day I’m President I have a heavy heart when I think of the hostages.”

Bush has declined to say he is optimistic that any hostages would be released soon.

In New York, Anderson’s friends and colleagues attended a Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.