Don’t Forget Slain Captives, Widow Urges : Relatives: Robin Higgins seeks information about Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, who was hanged by kidnapers in 1989.

Concerned that the dead may be forgotten in the rush to wrap up the Middle East hostage drama, the wife of a Marine officer who was hanged by his captors in Lebanon urged the Bush Administration on Monday to demand complete information about hostages who died in captivity and the return of their bodies.

“I rejoice when each man is freed, but it is distressing to me that in all of the rhetoric and all of the media hype, no one seems to be concerned about an accounting of my husband’s case,” said Robin Higgins, widow of Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins.

Col. Higgins was head of a 75-member U.N. peacekeeping team when he was kidnaped in southern Lebanon on Feb. 17, 1988. His captors announced July 31, 1989, that they had hanged him in retaliation for the Israeli kidnaping of a Shiite Muslim leader, and they released a videotape of a man, apparently Higgins, dangling from a gallows.

His wife, a Marine major assigned to the public affairs office of the 4th Marine Division in New Orleans, said in a telephone interview that she thinks the question of the hostages who died in captivity is not receiving the attention it deserves.

“I understand the (U.N.) secretary general (Javier Perez de Cuellar) realizes that Col. Higgins was working for him and will continue to do all he can,” she said. “But I haven’t heard anything else.”

A senior State Department official said that the search for information on Col. Higgins and two other hostages known to have died in captivity--William Buckley, the CIA’s Beirut station chief, and Peter Kilburn, a librarian at the American University of Beirut--remains high on the Administration’s agenda.

Buckley was seized March 16, 1984. In October, 1985, his captors reported that he was dead. Col. Higgins and Buckley were the only U.S. government officials to have been taken hostage in Lebanon.

The senior State Department official acknowledged that the issue of the dead sometimes has been omitted in “off-the-cuff” comments by Administration officials concerning the hostage crisis. But he said the matter has been raised repeatedly in diplomatic contacts.

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater, reading a prepared statement to reporters at President Bush’s Maine vacation compound, referred to the dead and the living in the same sentence.

“We continue to believe that all hostages and others confined outside the legal process in the region, regardless of nationality, should be released and that there should also be an accounting for all those who have died in captivity,” Fitzwater said.

Nevertheless, the Administration seems to be in no mood to antagonize the shadowy terrorist groups that continue to hold 10 Westerners in Lebanon until all remaining hostages have been freed. In addition, by focusing on the murders of Higgins and Buckley, the Administration could detract from the achievement of obtaining the release of others.

Robin Higgins, who said she was speaking only for herself and not for the Marine Corps, noted that Israel has demanded the return of the bodies of Israeli servicemen as part of any deal to resolve the hostage crisis.

“The Israelis make it clear that their concern is for a full accounting of their servicemen,” she said. “I haven’t heard any similar statements on our behalf.”

She acknowledged that Israel may have a stronger bargaining position because it is holding a number of Arab captives that the Beirut kidnapers are demanding in return for the release of the Western hostages.

“It is true that the Israelis are trading, and the United States is not,” Higgins said. “We don’t have a deal to offer.”