Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 6, 1990 TAG: 9005060302
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT PEAR THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
President Bush summed it up in five words: "I don't trade for hostages."
That stolid, unflinching posture appeared to bear fruit when a Shiite Moslem group in Lebanon freed Robert Polhill, an accounting professor at Beirut University College, after 39 months of captivity, and Frank Reed, a 57-year-old educator, after 43 months.
On his return to the United States, Polhill received a low-key reception from low-level officials. After Reed's release, Bush thanked Syria and Iran for their help and encouraged them to free the other Americans being held in captivity. But the president gave no sign of a reciprocal move, except to say that he would not object if Israel were to release Shiite prisoners as the Lebanese kidnappers have demanded.
Some see this statement as a subtle nudge for Israel to release some of the 300 to 400 Lebanese Shiite Moslem prisoners it is holding in hopes that this will prompt their Shiite compatriots in Beirut to free the six remaining American hostages. But White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said, "We don't tell other countries what to do. Our policy is that all hostages should be released."
Bush was vice president in an administration that was nearly undone by its willingness to negotiate with Iran for the release of hostages and he is not about to make the same mistake.
Even though he said in his inaugural address "goodwill begets goodwill," he was disinclined to make any overt gesture to Iran for its presumed help in extricating Polhill and Reed.
"The American policy is sound, and it's not going to change," Bush declared.
"I can't talk forgiveness," he said. "I don't have forgiveness in my heart as long as one American is held against his will."
At a news conference Thursday, Bush told reporters that he is trying to help Iran determine the fate of four Iranian diplomats who disappeared in 1982. He does not consider the action "dealing" for hostages, but concedes it could play a role in their release."
"If that is good will, so be it," he said, recalling the overture in his inaugural address.
Seventeen Westerners, including six Americans, are believed to be held by kidnappers in Lebanon.
The Bush policy is based, among other things, on the assumption that negotiations only encourage more kidnappings, that they benefit the hostage takers more than the hostages, and that the crisis has to end sometime and the United States has less to lose by waiting.
Bush said he thinks about the hostages every day, but the contrast between him and his two predecessors could not be more stark.
Jimmy Carter became a prisoner of the White House for several months after revolutionary militants invaded the American Embassy in Tehran in November 1979.
Ronald Reagan was so touched by the pathos of individual cases he sold arms to Iran and pursued a will-o'-the-wisp into the maze of the Iran-Contra scandal.
A bold effort to rescue hostages from Iran in 1980 ended in the desert as a spectacular fiasco.
Five years later the United States rescued 39 passengers on a hijacked jetliner after giving private assurances to Syria that Israel would release hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian detainees.
President Reagan's experience with secret negotiations showed the futility of trying to sort out and satisfy the conflicting demands of rival factions in Iran and the back alleys of Beirut.
And the United States has shunned the type of shameless pay-for-freedom negotiations France has pursued.
The lesson Bush seems to have learned is to find a spot and dig in his heels.
He seems determined to avoid any fixation on or obsession with the hostages. He declined to dispatch John H. Kelly, an assistant secretary of State, to Damascus, as Polhill's captors had demanded.
After the free-lance diplomacy conducted from the Reagan White House, Bush says he deals with Iran through regular diplomatic channels.
Administration officials say those messages are remarkably similar to the official public admonitions to the hostage-takers.
To be sure, there are still behind-the-scenes maneuvers, but it is now Iran, rather than the United States, that is trying to buy freedom for the hostages.
In that respect, too, Bush's policy seems to be working.
Security officials in Lebanon said Iran gave weapons and aid to Moslem fundamentalists in Lebanon to persuade them to release the American hostages.
The Tehran Times, which generally reflects the views of President Hashemi Rafsanjani, has been saying for months the hostages should be freed.
In the glow of Soviet-American detente, both Iran and Syria have become more willing to use their influence to help free the hostages.
They know Moscow, with an ethnic Moslem population of perhaps 55 million, is not going to support either Islamic fundamentalists or Arab hard-liners.
Even Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the Lebanese Shiite scholar regarded as a spiritual mentor of the umbrella group for the hostage-takers, the Party of God, said the hostage issue was being exploited by Westerners "to tarnish the image of Islam and the Moslems."
But while Bush can set foreign policy, he cannot always control the Congress, nor the complexities of tensions in the Middle East.
A few days after Polhill's release, the House of Representatives voted 378 to 34 in support of a resolution declaring "Jerusalem is and should remain the capital of the state of Israel."
Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wis., warned that Congress would jeopardize prospects for Middle East peace by "gratuitously" expressing its views at such a delicate moment.
Indeed, shortly after the resolution passed, another leader of the Party of God said the kidnappers should not free any of the remaining hostages.
Then Reed's release came in less than a week.
There is, however, no guarantee that the release of other hostages will occur.
"The Iranians have leverage over some of the hostage-holders, but it's not complete control and it doesn't apply to all the groups," said Shaul Bakhash, a professor of history at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.
by CNB