North Rejects Any Blame in Waite’s Capture : Hostages: ‘I’m no terrorist,’ he says. There is speculation that the Anglican envoy was used as a ‘cover’ in Iran-Contra maneuvers.

Former White House aide Oliver L. North arrived here Sunday for the British launching of his new book “Under Fire” and denied that he was inadvertently the cause of the long imprisonment of recently freed British hostage Terry Waite.

“I’m no terrorist,” North said at London’s Heathrow Airport when asked whether he felt responsible for Waite’s capture by pro-Iranian Lebanese militants almost five years ago.

North did not comment on speculation that he, as a member of the National Security Council staff, had improperly used Waite as a “cover” during Washington’s attempt to trade U.S. and Israeli weapons to Iran for the release of American hostages held by extremist Muslim kidnapers in Beirut.

The British Sunday press was filled with accounts of the background of Waite’s capture in January, 1987, just two months after the Iran-Contra scandal broke in Washington. Most of the press suggested that Waite had been a dupe of North in Washington’s complex Middle East operations.

Reports here and in the Middle East on Sunday speculated that Waite was seized because Lebanese militants believed he was working with American security forces.

“The Lebanese kidnapers always believed that Terry Waite was a spy for the CIA,” Said Shamsedin Khareghani, charge d’affaires at the Iranian Embassy in London, asserted.

North previously had said he did not believe that the 52-year-old Waite was working for American intelligence, and he reiterated that view here Sunday.

Waite, as a special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, had worked extensively in search of freedom for Western hostages held in Lebanon.

He was himself abducted on his last trip to Beirut, and many accounts by reporters who followed his activities suggested that he was seized because of closeness with the Americans, including meetings with North and acceptance of U.S. transportation, which provoked suspicion by the kidnapers that he was an American agent.

Waite has maintained silence on all speculation about his role since he was freed early last week, and he has been recuperating from his ordeal at a Royal Air Force medical facility west of London.

A special thanksgiving service was held Sunday at Waite’s parish church in London. And Waite, in a recorded message on the BBC World Service to Middle East hostages, declared that he trusts the Lebanese militants to keep their promise to release “my old companion in chains,” U.S. journalist Terry A. Anderson, and two other Americans still captive, Joseph J. Ciccipio and Alann Steen.

North said he did not know whether he would be seeing Waite during his book publicity tour here.

In a related development Sunday, Jonathan Mantle, biographer of Waite’s boss, former Archbishop of Canterbury Robert A. K. Runcie, declared that Waite seemed to have taken credit for the release of the Rev. Benjamin Weir and Father Lawrence M. Jenco, two former American hostages set free in the mid-1980s.

Mantle said they were released, according to later reports, because of arms deals with Iran arranged by North.

“I think it might be more an element of self-deception on the part of Terry Waite,” Mantle told the BBC. “I know that it is difficult to talk about him like this in the light of the fact that nobody deserves to spend five years in captivity in Lebanon, but I think this is fair comment.”

Mantle added that he believes Archbishop Runcie did not know how deeply involved Waite was with North and other American officials.