U.S. Lost Interest, Hostages’ Kin Charge

WASHINGTON — Relatives of two Americans held hostage in Beirut bitterly challenged the assertions of President Reagan that there is no one with whom the United States can negotiate to free their kinsmen and suggested Sunday that the Administration has lost interest in the matter.

Peggy Say, sister of Terry A. Anderson, chief Middle Eastern correspondent for the Associated Press, who was abducted in March, 1985, said in a televised interview that U.S. officials should “ask Terry Waite.” Waite, a lay emissary of the Archbishop of Canterbury, made contact last November with Islamic Jihad extremists who claim to be holding Anderson and two other Americans but failed to arrange their release.

“We know who they are, and we know how to talk to them,” Say said.

Eric Jacobsen, whose father, David, director of the American University Hospital in Beirut, was taken hostage in May, 1985, suggested during a joint appearance with Say on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that a “double standard” led to differing treatment of the Beirut hostages and of Nicholas Daniloff, the American newsman who was charged as a spy by the Soviet Union, then freed last week after top-level negotiations.

‘We Don’t Know Who’

Jacobsen said he doubted Reagan’s denial on Friday that there was any comparison between the cases. Reagan said the men in Beirut “were not seized by a government; we don’t know who is holding them.”

Commenting on a videotape showing Anderson and Jacobsen pleading that their case get the kind of attention accorded Daniloff’s, Reagan said his Administration had been “trying every channel” without success and suggested that the hostages made the videotape under duress.

Jacobsen maintained that delivery of the videotape to Western news agencies in Beirut signaled a desire by his father’s captors to resolve the situation. He attributed the Administration’s alleged disinterest in the hostages to a feeling that “the political gain just isn’t there,” and he added, “All we have to gain . . . is the lives of the hostages.”

However, neither Jacobsen nor Say offered any suggestion as to how to meet the main demand of those holding the hostages: freedom for 17 Shia Muslim terrorists imprisoned by Kuwait for bombing attacks on the American and French embassies there in 1983. They also offered no ideas about how to bring about a relaxation of the U.S. government’s standing policy against conducting negotiations with terrorists.

Daniloff, interviewed on ABC-TV’s “This Week With David Brinkley,” said he was “delighted with the conditions under which he was released” in a deal that led also to the release by the United States of Gennady F. Zakharov, a Soviet scientist on the staff of the United Nations whose arrest in New York on espionage charges preceded Daniloff’s detention in Moscow.

Question of Precedent

Asked if his case had not set a precedent under which the Soviet government might pick up another American journalist if another Soviet citizen is arrested for spying, Daniloff replied: “If the Soviet spy had diplomatic immunity, I think that’s one type of case. If the Soviet spy does not have diplomatic immunity, that’s another. And the danger you have raised is in fact true.”

On the same program, Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, called it a “bad precedent” to trade accused criminals for innocent hostages, because that implies an admission of moral equivalence between journalists and spies.

Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he was “uncomfortable with the whole episode” leading to Daniloff’s freedom but felt that the Administration had “muddled through” without Daniloff’s having entered any plea, while accused Soviet spy Zakharov pleaded no contest to espionage charges.