Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 23, 1990 TAG: 9004230145
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The Associated Press and The New York Times
DATELINE: DAMASCUS, SYRIA LENGTH: Long
The Iranian foreign minister was quoted as saying the Shiite movements in Lebanon wanted a prompt reciprocal move for freeing Polhill, but President Bush said he would make no deals with the kidnappers.
An Iranian newspaper close to Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani said today that the Lebanese kidnappers should release another American hostage immediately without conditions.
Polhill was the first American hostage to be released in nearly 3 1/2 years.
Polhill, 55, of New York, was freed near the seaside Summerland Hotel in Moslem west Beirut at 5:15 p.m. (11:15 a.m. EDT) and driven immediately to Damascus where he was turned over to U.S. Ambassador Edward Djerejian.
"I want to tell you I'm a very happy man tonight," Polhill told a news conference in Damascus, looking dazed but elated. "I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long. Thirty-nine months is a long time."
Early today, he and his Lebanese wife, Feryal, took off from the Syrian capital in a U.S. Air Force C-131 transport for Weisbaden, West Germany.
In Weisbaden, Polhill will undergo medical checks and a debriefing by U.S. intelligence officers at a U.S. military hospital. Other American captives freed in the past have also gone there.
Bush thanked Syria and Iran for their roles in freeing Polhill, and called for the release of all the hostages.
Administration officials said Sunday that the release of Polhill was the result of months of messages to the Iranians that, if they wanted better relations with Washington, they would have to unconditionally re lease all hostages.
Iran's foreign minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, was quoted early today as saying the pro-Iranian extremists in Lebanon wanted a quick reciprocal move. The official Syrian Arab News Agency, quoting Velayati in New York, specified the release of Sheik Abdul Karim Obeid, a Lebanese Shiite clergyman, abducted by Israeli soldiers in July.
Apparently mindful of the Iran-Contra affair, in which the Reagan administration sought to trade arms for hostages, the Bush administration emphasized that there would be no material tradeoff for Polhill's freedom other than helping to pave the way for better relations between Iran and the United States. Officials said that messages to that effect had been conveyed to Iran through Japan and Switzerland.
The New York Times reported today that the Iranian government gave Muslim fundamentalists in Lebanon weapons and financial assistance to persuade them to release American hostages, according to security officials here.
Some of the weapons, which included tanks, armored personnel carriers, and multi-barreled rocket launchers, were on display in Beirut on Friday at parades staged by the Iranian-backed Party of God, said the officials, who spoke on condition they not be identified.
The deal was worked out during two trips to Lebanon in the last four weeks by Mahmoud Hashemi, the brother of President Rafsanjani of Iran, the officials said.
Arab diplomats in Beirut said they could not confirm the security officials' assertions, but they referred to what they called circumstantial evidence lending the reports credibility.
Seventeen Western hostages remain missing in Lebanon, including seven Americans. Polhill, a professor of business studies and accounting at Beirut University College, and two other U.S. educators, Jesse Turner and Alann Steen, were held by the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine.
In a Syrian TV interview, Polhill said he was grateful to those who helped him, but added: "I'm still deeply concerned about my two friends and others who are still held in the conditions I was held in."
Polhill said he played cards with other hostages during his captivity and tried to keep his mind off the possibility of freedom.
"I strived to continue to be angry, knowing at all times that if I began to lose that anger I would just sort of become a vegetable and I didn't want that to happen," he said in the interview.
The terms of the release, which followed a series of communiques from the Shiite Moslem kidnappers, were not known.
Guards outside the Summerland who witnessed the release said Polhill stepped out of a car that screeched to a halt about 50 yards from the hotel.
He was immediately picked up by a three-car Syrian convoy and driven off at high speed.
The Syrian TV footage showed Polhill being driven through Beirut, sitting in the back of a car and puffing heavily on a cigarette. He appeared drawn after his long ordeal and smiled wanly several times.
At his news conference, Polhill, gaunt and pale, said he was too tired to answer any questions about seven other American hostages or his captivity by the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine since Jan. 24, 1987.
Polhill and Steen, a native of Boston who turned 51 on Sunday, and Turner, 42, of Boise, Idaho, were kidnapped from the Beirut University College campus by gunmen disguised as police officers.
The last American hostage to be freed was David Jacobsen, former director of the American University Hospital in Beirut. He was kidnapped in Beirut on May 28, 1985, was released Nov. 2, 1986.
He had been held by another Shiite faction, Islamic Jihad, or Isamic Holy War.
In Libya on Sunday, Col. Moammar Gadhafi also called for the release of hostages in an appeal to Moslems around the world, the official Libyan news agency JANA said.
The first word of an impending hostage release came Wednesday, when the kidnappers announced they would free one captive in 48 hours.
But on Thursday, the captors indefinitely postponed the release after Bush refused to send John Kelly, assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, to Damascus as the kidnappers had demanded.
Syria, as it moves back to the Arab mainstream after years of isolation, apparently wants to improve its image in the West and hopes that mediating the release of U.S. hostages will persuade the United States to eventually take it off the list of countries sponsoring terrorism.
by CNB