Will Free U.S. Hostage, Lebanon Militants Say : Mideast: A pro-Iranian faction signals a possible breakthrough. U.S. diplomat is asked to ‘coordinate.’

Pro-Iranian militants holding three American professors hostage in Beirut said Wednesday that one would be freed within 48 hours, signaling a possible breakthrough in the tortuous hostage drama.

Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, the group that kidnaped the Americans from a Beirut university campus in January, 1987, demanded that John Kelly, assistant secretary of state for Mideast affairs, go to Damascus, Syria, “to coordinate some final steps to guarantee success” of the promised release.

The kidnapers said they are acting “in response to the wishes of Islamic leaders and urgent appeals by officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran for a goodwill initiative in order to close the hostage file.” They also mentioned “the permanent Syrian efforts in this line.”

Their statement was delivered at dusk to a Lebanese newspaper and Western news agencies in Beirut. It was accompanied by an authenticating photo of one of their captives, Jesse Turner, 42, of Boise, Ida., a mathematics teacher.

Turner and two other teachers, Robert Polhill, 55, and Alann Steen, 50, were seized off the campus of Beirut University College in a daring daylight operation by gunmen posing as policemen.

Kidnaped in the same incident was Mitheleshwar Singh, a fellow teacher and an Indian with U.S. resident alien status, who was released in October, 1988.

The statement did not say which of the three professors would be released. Steen, a Boston native who taught at Cal State Humboldt in Arcata before going to Beirut in 1983, will turn 51 on Sunday.

The kidnapers’ statement said, in part:

“We have decided to free one American hostage within 48 hours on the basis of reciprocal positive action from the other party to speed the issue towards a happy ending. We want the humanitarian move to be balanced between both sides. This is a condition to move forward. Otherwise there is no meaning for a one-sided movement.”

The statement also said there would be a “verbal message which will be carried to President Bush” but gave no details about what the message is or how it would be delivered.

It also did not give any explanation of what is meant by reciprocal moves or what the kidnapers expect Kelly, a former ambassador to Lebanon, to arrange should he arrive in Damascus.

“We are ready for either positive response or escalation, and the other party has to choose,” the message said.

Kelly is traveling in Europe, according to State Department officials. But they said he will not be sent to Damascus because such acquiescence to the kidnapers’ demand might make it appear that the United States is negotiating with hostage-takers.

Shortly after the four teachers were abducted, the kidnapers demanded freedom for 400 Arab prisoners in Israel in return for their release, but the demand has not been raised since.

In 1988, the kidnapers demanded that the U.S. government issue a statement supporting the Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Last month, the kidnapers threatened to kill their hostages unless unspecified demands were met.

Both Polhill, a New Yorker, and Steen have medical disorders--diabetes and high blood pressure, respectively--and their physical conditions are not known. No details are publicly known about the conditions of five more American and other Western hostages believed held in Beirut.

Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, like other hostage-takers in Beirut, is believed to be a militant, clandestine faction of the Hezbollah (Party of God) organization of Lebanese Shiite Muslims. All the groups reportedly bear allegiance to Iran.

The IJLP is believed by analysts to be close to the group called simply Islamic Jihad, which holds two of the Americans, Thomas Sutherland and Terry A. Anderson, the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press. The longest-held hostage, Anderson was kidnaped in March, 1985.

For the last two months, Iranian officials and Tehran newspapers have sent mixed signals suggesting movement on the hostage crisis. The crisis flared last summer when another group of kidnapers announced the execution by hanging of its hostage, U.S. Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, in retaliation for the Israeli abduction of a Shiite Muslim cleric in southern Lebanon.

A U.S. carrier task force moved toward Lebanese shores as that group, the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth, threatened to kill another American if the Israelis did not release their hostage. Under heavy diplomatic pressure, the threat was withdrawn and the crisis subsided. The reprieved hostage, Joseph J. Cicippio, was the last American captive seen alive, on videotape, making a somber appeal for his life and bidding farewell to his wife.

The latest round of the hostage drama began with reports last month in the Tehran Times, an Iranian daily considered close to President Hashemi Rafsanjani, that said the crisis would be resolved sometime this year. That report was followed by demands of Rafsanjani’s hard-line political foe, former Interior Minister Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, that no concessions be made to the United States. Similar signals came from both camps over the following weeks.

In recent days, the drama was marked by the release last weekend of three European hostages held by the Palestinian group Revolutionary Council of Fatah. An editorial in last Saturday’s hard-line Iranian newspaper Kayhan International applauded the release from prison in the United States of Dhoruba al-Mujahid, a black American Muslim, who the daily said had been jailed for 20 years for shooting two New York police officers.

The release of the three Europeans was not considered directly related to the Beirut drama because the kidnapers were apparently Palestinians and the abduction took place at sea off the Gaza Strip. But the Kayhan International editorial broke new ground in the hostage situation, according to an analyst for the London-based Mideast Mirror who noted that the newspaper had been demanding the release of Mujahid and two Muslim companions.

In discussing the hostage issue, the daily noted: “One is inclined to hope that all concerned or involved in the matter adopt a similar outlook and act as wisely as the Bush Administration,” unprecedentedly positive words for an American president from the Kayhan.

THE BEIRUT UNIVERSITY FOUR

Professors Jesse Turner, Alann Steen, Robert Polhill, all Americans, and Mithileshwar Singh, an Indian with U.S. resident alien status, were kidnaped Jan. 24, 1987, on the Beirut University College campus in West Beirut. Their abductors posed as Lebanese police officers. A pro-Iranian Shiite faction, the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, claimed responsibility.

The abductions came amid a spate of kidnapings that followed the January arrest of Mohammed Ali Hamadi in West Germany in connection with the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jetliner. Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite disappeared four days before they were kidnaped while on his way to meet with representatives of Islamic Jihad.

Singh, a professor of business and finance and chairman of the business department at Beirut University, was freed Oct. 3, 1988.

Jesse Turner, 42, of Boise, Ida. He was assistant instructor of mathematics and computer sciences at Beirut University College. Turner graduated from the University of Idaho. He came to Beirut in 1983 with his second wife, Badr. She was pregnant when he was kidnaped--their daughter, Joanne, was born July 24, 1987.

Alann Steen, will be 51 on Sunday. A Boston native, he was a journalism professor. Steen once taught at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif., and at Cal State Chico. He went to Beirut in 1983 and has two sons and two daughters with his second wife, Virginia.

Robert Polhill, 55, of New York City, was assistant professor of business studies. He graduated from New York University. Divorced and the father of two sons, he came to Lebanon in 1983. Polhill was living on the Beirut University campus with his second wife, Firyal, when he was abducted.