Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 23, 1990 TAG: 9004230311
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: FRANKFURT, WEST GERMANY LENGTH: Medium
Doctors who later examined the 55-year-old educator said he was malnourished and mildly dehydrated.
Polhill's release Sunday after 1,182 days of captivity was followed by a reported call by Iran's foreign minister for a swift reciprocal move - freedom for a Shiite Moslem cleric kidnapped by Israeli troops in July.
President Bush thanked Iran and Syria - whose military forces in Lebanon picked up Polhill in west Beirut and drove him to the Syrian capital of Damascus - for their help in securing the release.
But the president said he would make no deals with the pro-Iranian Shiite Moslem militants in Lebanon still holding 17 Western hostages, seven of them Americans.
An Iranian newspaper close to that country's president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, today called on the Lebanese kidnappers to release another American hostage immediately and without conditions.
Rafsanjani is among Iranian leaders seeking better relations with the West. The Bush administration has expressed willingness to improve ties if the hostage crisis is settled.
And in Beirut, Hussein Musawi, a leading pro-Iranian Shiite cleric, said today that freeing another Western hostage was "in the cards." But he stressed there must first be reciprocity on the part of Washington.
Musawi, interviewed by the communist-run Voice of the People, said: "The possibility of another release is in the cards, but I don't know when, how or for what.
"Such a step [Polhill's release] has to have a reciprocation. It is not feasible that all releases would be made as goodwill gestures," he said.
He refused to speculate on which hostage might be freed next.
U.S. officials said today in Wiesbaden that they had no information about another U.S. hostage being released. They said they were "not aware of any message for Bush" Polhill may have brought from his captors.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Polhill was kept in the same building as American hostages Jesse Turner and Alann Steen, but "he probably doesn't know about Terry Anderson or Terry Waite."
Anderson, 42, chief Middle East correspondent of The Associated Press, was kidnapped on March 16, 1985. He has been held the longest of the foreign hostages. Waite, 50, British envoy of the Anglican Church, disappeared in Lebanon on Jan. 20, 1987.
Polhill, a New Yorker, looked extremely frail today and was hunched over as he came down the steps of the U.S. Air Force C-141 at Rhein-Main air base in a cold rain, supported by two airmen.
He was dressed in a military camouflage jacket and carried a football given to him as "a touch of America" under one arm during the short walk to a military van.
About two dozen people nearby applauded, and the gaunt Polhill responded with a wave. A helicopter whisked the freed hostage and his Lebanese wife, Feryal, to a U.S. military hospital in nearby Wiesbaden.
by CNB