Pro-Iranian Militant Bars Trade for Israeli Captives : Hostages: Hezbollah aide indicates that remaining Americans face a long wait. He sees a ‘negative’ U.S. stand.

A top official of Lebanon’s pro-Iranian Hezbollah militants declared Tuesday that freedom for three captive Israeli servicemen is “impossible” and expressed doubt that the ordeal of the remaining foreign hostages in Beirut could end soon.

Hussein Moussawi, an instrumental figure in the release of two American hostages last month, told the Voice of Lebanon, the Communist Party radio station, that the issue of the hostages has “turned into a very complicated case because of the negative American stand. . . . This year may not witness a solution.”

Iranian demands that the United States make a tangible response to the release of educators Robert Polhill and Frank H. Reed have focused in the last week on Lebanese Shiite prisoners held by Israel. Over the weekend, two influential U.S. senators, Daniel P. Moynihan (D-N.Y.) and Bob Dole (R-Kan.), threw their weight behind demands that the White House pressure Israel to release its prisoners in hopes that more hostages would be freed.

Israeli officials, however, have reaffirmed their policy against unconditional releases. The Jerusalem government, unlike the White House, is prepared to deal on exchanges of prisoners and hostages, and Israeli authorities demand the return of the three servicemen believed held by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Moussawi told the Voice of Lebanon that American pressure on the Israelis would “have positive effects,” but he claimed that a swap of the Israeli servicemen for Shiite and Palestinian prisoners is impossible.

The hard-line Hezbollah official, who heads the Islamic Amal faction, was quoted by United Press International as saying, “No Muslim group in Lebanon is ready to negotiate with Israel because such a dialogue will be a recognition of the enemy and an ideological danger to our cause.”

A firm public position against releasing the Israelis could be a negotiating tactic, but Shiite demands and Israeli responses are unchanged since a similar escalation of the hostage crisis last summer.

Iran, which apparently has significant influence with groups holding foreign hostages in Lebanon, has also demanded freedom for four Iranian diplomats seized by right-wing Lebanese Forces militiamen north of Beirut in July, 1982.

Moussawi warned that if the four are found to have been slain, it could prompt a violent reaction by those holding the hostages.

“If the death of the four Iranians is ascertained . . . one of the kidnap groups might react by murdering a hostage,” Moussawi said. “I don’t have any concrete information on that. But they’ve done it before. What’s there to stop them from doing it again?” he told the Associated Press in a telephone interview from his headquarters in the city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley.

Moussawi, a ranking member of one of three Lebanese clans that Western intelligence officials believe form the core of the Beirut hostage takers, appeared to be a conduit in the release of Polhill and Reed. From Baalbek, the bearded militant was well-placed to funnel communications between the kidnapers and the governments of Syria and Iran. When the release of Polhill briefly appeared in doubt, Moussawi told Lebanese reporters it remained certain.

Now he appears to be taking the line of Iranian President Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has scolded the Bush Administration for its refusal to deal with the kidnapers.