Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 30, 1990 TAG: 9004300379
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BEIRUT, LEBANON LENGTH: Long
The minister, Farouk al-Sharaa, did not name the hostage. A previously unknown group calling itself the Organization of Islamic Dawn said in Beirut Sunday it would free American educator Frank Reed within 48 hours.
"There is a high probability that an American hostage will be released during the next hours," al-Sharaa said in the Syrian capital after meeting U.S. Ambassador Edward Djerejian. He did not elaborate.
The Iranian ambassador in Damascus, Mohammad Hassan Akhtiari, said after a meeting with al-Sharaa: "I expect a release during the next 24 hours."
In Washington, meanwhile, a State Department official said the United States had received word from Syria of an impending release and that a reception team "will probably be leaving sometime this morning" for Wiesbaden, West Germany.
U.S. officials were in Wiesbaden just last week, debriefing freed U.S hostage Robert Polhill. Polhill was freed April 22 after 39 months in captivity.
Earlier today, Hussein Musawi, a Shiite Moslem leader, raised doubts about the kidnappers' statements Sunday that they would release Reed.
Musawi, who along with Syria and Iran played a key role in Polhill's release, said he had "not heard of this American hostage or the kidnap group" before Sunday.
"No Islamic organization loyal to Jerusalem and following Ayatollah Khomeini's line will hand the Americans a new gift after its support of the Jerusalem resolution," he said.
He referred to a non-binding resolution passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last Tuesday endorsing a united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Musawi called the resolution a demonstration of American ill will, and on Wednesday urged kidnappers not to free another American hostage.
Musawi spoke to The Associated Press by telephone from his headquarters in the ancient Roman city of Baalbek in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley of east Lebanon.
He is the reputed mentor of Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, the Shiite group that kidnapped Polhill and U.S. educators Alann Steen and Jesse Turner in Beirut Jan. 24, 1987. Turner and Steen are still captives.
Iranian state radio, meanwhile, accused Washington of damaging efforts to free the 17 Western hostage remaining in Lebanon by not reciprocating for Polhill's release.
"With regard to Washington's reaction . . . the process of solving the hostage-taking crisis is much slower than was previously expected," Tehran Radio said in a commentary. The dispatch was monitored in Cyprus.
After Polhill's release, Iranian officials and Lebanese Shiite leaders called for the reciprocal releases of Shiite fundamentalists held by Israel and Kuwait. President Bush has said he refuses to deal for the hostages.
The English-language Tehran Times, a newspaper close to Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, quoted an unnamed Iranian official today as saying Reed's captors agreed to free him after "extensive talks" that followed Polhill's release.
Rafsanjani, leader of Iran's so-called pragmatists, is seeking to improve ties with the West after a decade of hostility. He is opposed at home by fundamentalist radicals allied to the Shiite militants in Lebanon.
Reed, 57, director of the Lebanese International School, was kidnapped Sept. 9, 1986, near Beirut airport.
The promise to free him was made in two typewritten statements, accompanied by three photographs of the hostage. The messages and photos were delivered to Beirut's independent daily An-Nahar and a Western news agency.
No demands was made for Reed's release. The kidnappers said he would carry a message to the Bush administrtaion.
The first statement was unsigned. The second identified the kidnap faction as the Organization of Islamic Dawn. His abduction was earlier claimed by the Organization of Arab Revolutionary Cells-Omar Mukhtar Brigade.
Bush responded cautiously to the pledge Reed will be freed.
"I just won't say anything," he said Sunday. "If that proves to be true, that's wonderful."
Reed, a native of Malden, Mass., had lived in Beirut since late 1977, before he was kidnapped. He had converted to Islam to marry his second wife, Fahima Dalati, a Syrian Moslem.
He has a son, 9-year-old Tarek with Fahima, and two other children, Jacqueline and Marilyn, from his first marriage. They live in Medford, Massachusetts. His wife has been staying with her mother-in-law in Malden since leaving Beirut last year.
Her sister Selwa Dalati said in Damascus when told about the kidnapper's promise to free Reed: "It's great. I just couldn't believe it."
The name of the previously unknown group, Organization of Islamic dawn, suggested the kidnappers are pro-Iranian Shiite zealots like those who hold most of the 17 Westerners missing in Lebanon.
In addition to Reed, the hostages include six Americans, four Britons, two West Germans, two Swiss, an Irishman and an Italian.
by CNB