The Key Has Got to Be Syria : Damascus must finally use its vast influence

British journalist John McCarthy, freed after more than five years as a prisoner of Islamic Jihad, has brought out from Lebanon the welcome news that American hostages Terry Anderson and Thomas Sutherland and British hostage Terry Waite are well and that the conditions of their captivity have lately approved. What McCarthy didn’t bring out along with him was Anderson, whose release had been expected.

Freedom for Anderson could of course come at any moment. It’s also possible that floating the prospect that the longest held of the Lebanon hostages was about to be set free was just one more sadistic ploy in the unrelievedly cruel power game played by his captors. Political pressures, as they know, can grow from many sources, heightened disappointments being one.

Just what kind of pressures the pro-Iranian Muslim fundamentalist group has in mind was again made explicit by Syria’s Foreign Ministry. Israel and its client, the South Lebanon Army, hold prisoner between 300 and 400 Lebanese and Palestinian residents of Lebanon. Islamic Jihad says they must be released if the remaining Western hostages are to be freed, although it’s by no means clear that Islamic Jihad could in fact guarantee release of all 11 or 12 of them.

Israel is willing to deal, but it wants back seven Israeli servicemen who have been missing in Lebanon since Israel’s invasion in 1982. Most are known to be dead--Israel wants the remains returned--but one or two may be alive.

The elements of a grand swap thus seem clear. But, typical of Lebanon’s politics, clarity could prove illusory.

Hours after McCarthy’s release, an underground Lebanese group kidnaped and said it will kill a French charity official if more Western hostages are freed. This newest outrage was almost predictable; on earlier occasions, when hostages were set free others were quickly seized to take their place.

What was behind Thursday’s kidnaping? Several Lebanese fundamentalist groups appear to take their inspiration from one or another faction in Iran. It may be that there are divisions among the Lebanese over how to confront the West that reflect the divisions between Iran’s own so-called moderates and intransigents. Right now there’s just no way to tell.

The point that does again stand out so conspicuously is that Lebanon’s Shiite radicals now constitute the only armed factions that have not been forced to bend to the will of the Syrian-backed Beirut government. They are the only groups still functioning autonomously. That is no easy thing to do in a country where Syria keeps 40,000 troops and a pervasive secret police presence, and it raises again the issue of Syria’s credibility when it claims it is unable to force Islamic Jihad and similar groups to give up their Western hostages.

Syria, having lost its Soviet patron, now sees the value of achieving better ties with the United States. Isn’t it time for Washington to set some conditions of its own by demanding that Damascus finally use its vast influence in Lebanon to obtain freedom for all the Westerners still held there?