Arabs Freed; Release Seen for American : Mideast: After Israel gives up 25 prisoners, Beirut kidnapers say they will let Cicippio go today. U.N. chief had asked Jerusalem for a ‘gesture.’

Israel on Sunday released 25 Arab prisoners held by its client militia in southern Lebanon, and hours later, Lebanese kidnapers said they will free American hostage Joseph J. Cicippio this morning in Beirut.

Israel’s Defense Ministry announced that the South Lebanon Army, its proxy security force along the border, released the Arab captives from Khiam prison in response to a request from U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar for a “personal gesture.”

Later, the Revolutionary Justice Organization, one of Beirut’s pro-Iranian kidnap cells, announced that it “will free American Joseph Cicippio (this morning) at the Beau Rivage Hotel” in Beirut.

The handwritten statement delivered to the offices of Beirut’s An Nahar newspaper was accompanied by a photograph of a clean-shaven but grim-appearing Cicippio, according to news agency reports in Beirut.

The 61-year-old university official has been held for more than five years.

Earlier Sunday, the Revolutionary Justice Organization had said that Cicippio would be released within 48 hours. The earlier message, delivered to a French news agency in the Lebanese capital, claimed that the kidnapers had received U.N. guarantees concerning “all the detainees in the Israeli jails.”

The developments apparently marked the return of Israel to a period of hostage negotiations that began last August and have since seen six American and British captives freed in Beirut.

In a pair of previous exchanges organized by U.N. Secretary General Perez de Cuellar, Israel had received confirmation of the deaths of two soldiers missing in Lebanon and the remains of a third. Israeli involvement was interrupted during the most recent hostage release, raising concerns in Israel that it would be shut out of the dealing. Israel is still awaiting information on four other servicemen, especially word about air force navigator Ron Arad, the only one of the missing presumed still to be alive.

Freedom for Cicippio, who was acting comptroller of the American University of Beirut when he was abducted from the campus Sept. 12, 1986, would leave two Americans--journalist Terry A. Anderson and educator Alann Steen--still held hostage in Beirut. The official list of Western hostages in Lebanon also includes two Germans and an Italian. At the time of Cicippio’s abduction, 18 Westerners were being held.

Freedom would end a torturous ordeal for the Norristown, Pa., native, who two years ago was marked for execution by his captors and had delivered a tearful, videotaped farewell to his Lebanese wife, Ilham, but was spared less than an hour before the sentence was to be carried out.

In Damascus, the Syrian Arab News Agency reported that Perez de Cuellar’s special envoy on the hostage crisis, Giandomenico Picco, had called on Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh to thank the Syrian government for its help in resolving hostage issues. A later Reuters news agency dispatch from Damascus quoted an unidentified senior Foreign Ministry official as saying Cicippio is expected to be released today.

“We expect the rest of the American hostages to be freed by the end of next week,” the official said, apparently meaning mid-month. Earlier, a report by the French-based Radio Monte Carlo said that Steen would be released Wednesday and Anderson within 10 days.

The most recent American freed was educator Thomas M. Sutherland, who was freed last month along with British churchman Terry Waite.

The Beirut kidnapers’ early Sunday communique appeared to put the rapid-fire exchange of Western hostages, Arab prisoners and information on missing Israeli servicemen firmly back on track only 10 days after a leader of Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim organization that sometimes speaks for the kidnapers, declared that the Israelis were no longer a factor in the hostage negotiations.

“We should differentiate between the issue of the prisoners and detainees and that of the Western hostages,” Abbas Moussawi, head of the Islamic Amal wing of Hezbollah, told a Beirut news conference, assuring reporters that the hostage crisis was “heading to a final solution in the coming few weeks.”

But the kidnapers’ initial Sunday announcement in Beirut indicated that the Israelis were back in the equation. It specifically referred to Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, a Shiite cleric abducted by Israeli commandos in 1989, saying of Lebanese captives held by the South Lebanon Army: “We . . . bring them the good news that the end of their plight is near, especially for the struggling Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, and a videotape we received during the last round of negotiations will be distributed to the media on his status in detention.”

This was the first public mention of a videotape purporting to show Obeid’s jail conditions. A senior Israeli official declined to either confirm or deny the existence of such a tape. However, at the time of the Waite-Sutherland releases, a journalist from Israel television was sent to interview Obeid, and the tape was expected to be aired.

“We don’t have any promises,” said government spokesmen Yossi Olmert. “Anyway, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Israel is doing everything it can to obtain the release of all captives, and this gesture shows it.

“It’s up to the Iranians,” Olmert concluded, giving voice to Israel’s firm opinion that Tehran pulls all the strings in hostage releases.

Times staff writer Daniel Williams, in Jerusalem, and special correspondent Marilyn Raschka, in Beirut, contributed to this report.