Negotiate for Captives, U.S. Urged : Freed Cleric Seeks Pressure on Kuwait but Plea Is Rejected

WASHINGTON —  The Rev. Benjamin Weir, freed last weekend after 16 months of captivity in the Middle East, urged the Reagan Administration on Thursday to negotiate for the release of six remaining U.S. hostages in Lebanon by putting pressure on Kuwait to free 17 Arab prisoners.

The White House and the State Department quickly rejected the appeal, saying in identical statements that the United States “will not pressure other governments to make concessions to those holding hostages.”

White House spokesman Edward P. Djerejian said the Administration wants to protect U.S. citizens, adding, “But to give in to the demands of terrorists would only encourage future acts of terrorism and could lead to the taking of additional hostages.”

Islamic Jihad’s Threat

According to Weir, his captors--members of the shadowy extremist group Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War)--have threatened just such acts if their demands are not met.

He said the fundamentalists holding the other Americans “are ready to release” them in exchange for the 17 prisoners but that they also have threatened executions and further kidnapings “if there is not a positive response to their demand in the near future.” He said he was given no specific timetable.

Appearing with his wife and family at a crowded news conference at the National Presbyterian Church here, Weir said he conveyed the demand to the White House at the request of his captors.

“They have released me as a sign of their good intentions,” the 61-year-old Presbyterian minister from Berkeley said. “However, they are not willing to wait much longer.”

The 17 prisoners the Kuwaitis hold are Arab terrorists convicted for the bombings in December, 1983, of the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait and of several Kuwaiti installations. Five people were officially reported killed, none of them Americans, and 61 were injured in a series of six suicide bombings.

Asked if his captors would settle for anything less than the prisoners’ release in Kuwait, Weir replied, “They have insisted on this as one whole, complete demand.”

Any change, he said, would have to be determined by “some kind of negotiating process.”

He said his captors “repeatedly said that there was no response from the U.S. regarding their demands, even though they were ready to try to consider various options. . . .”

American officials have credited Syrian President Hafez Assad with influencing the Muslim extremists to release hostages in the past, including 39 who were held in the hijacking of a TWA jet to Beirut in June.

But Weir, responding to a question, said that on “one or two occasions” his captors “said they would not listen to anything Syria might have to say to them.”

During the lengthy news conference, Weir, wearing a neat beard and sporting a yellow ribbon in his lapel, appeared to be in good health. He fielded questions skillfully, showing occasional humor.

His family, beaming and also wearing ribbons, said he seemed to be his old self. “I think my father has not changed one iota,” one of his daughters, Christine, remarked.

Weir, who had been a missionary in Lebanon since 1953, said he had been allowed to meet and pray with with four of the six remaining American kidnap victims, all presumably being held by Islamic Jihad. He described the four as in good health.

Weir added that he did not see the two others.

He said that beginning July 2, he was allowed to meet with Father Lawrence Jenco, director of Catholic Relief Services in Lebanon, who was kidnaped in January; David P. Jacobsen, of Huntington Beach, Calif., administrator of the American University Hospital, abducted in May; Thomas Sutherland, an American University dean, seized in June, and Terry A. Anderson, Beirut bureau manager of the Associated Press, who was taken in March.

Weir said that sometimes he was taken to the other four men and sometimes they were brought to his location. On those occasions, he said, “we would talk about what was going on with us . . . just sharing experiences and getting a great deal of mutual support from each other.”

No Sign of Kilburn, Buckley

But two other captives, Peter Kilburn, a librarian at American University, and William Buckley, a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, were never part of these groups, which varied in size from time to time.

“I have not seen them (Kilburn and Buckley) nor been in contact with them,” Weir said. “I do not know anything about them.”

Weir said he was not told why he was released and that the notification of his freedom “came very suddenly . . . perhaps an hour or an hour and a half before I was actually released” just before midnight Saturday.

Describing his May 8, 1984, kidnaping, Weir said he and his wife, Carol, were walking on a Beirut street when he was “suddenly grabbed and forced into a car.”

Lying on the floor of the auto, Weir recalled, “I said to myself, ‘This is a new experience.’ ” He said he immediately put himself “in the hands of God,” then gradually assumed “a sense of responsibility for myself.”

He was moved to different places, but said he assumes that he was always in Lebanon because travel times were short.

Boredom Was Worst

Weir said he was held in solitary confinement for the first year, being provided with adequate food except for vegetables and fruit. He said his captors probably did not know his identity when he was abducted and that his religious affiliation brought him “special respect.” Boredom, he said, was his greatest problem.

During his captivity, Weir said he gathered that Muslim extremists kidnaped Americans to express opposition to the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and to protest U.S. support for Israel.

Asked if he sympathized with his captors’ grievances, Weir replied that “there is need to re-examine U.S. foreign policy” regarding Israel and Lebanon. Nevertheless, he said, “I deeply resent the injustice of having been kidnaped, as did the other men.”

Asked if he ever intended to return to Lebanon--he had been there 32 years--Weir said: “To me, it was a tender time of realizing that perhaps I was saying good-by to Lebanon for the last time.”