Anderson’s Kin Mark His 5 Years as Hostage

WASHINGTON —  Family, friends and colleagues of Associated Press correspondent Terry A. Anderson gathered at Lafayette Park on Friday to mark an anniversary they had hoped to never see.

On March 16, 1985, after playing an early morning tennis match with an AP colleague, Anderson was kidnaped from a Beirut street.

Friday marked the end of his fifth year in captivity.

Since then, both his father and his brother have died of cancer. He has never seen his daughter, who will turn 5 in June.

The solemn ceremony, held across the street from the White House, also brought together the families of the seven other Americans who were kidnaped after Anderson and are still held in Lebanon. There were songs, prayers and remembrances, expressions of outrage and hope.

But noticeably absent was any evidence that the hostages would be released soon. Just two weeks ago, anticipation of a possible release intensified when Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani said he saw the hostage ordeal “moving toward a solution.”

Since then, however, the mood has turned sour. The Iranian president openly mocked President Bush last week for having accepted a phone call, said to be from Rafsanjani, that turned out to be a hoax. The Iranian news media have begun referring to the hostages again as American “spies.”

On Thursday, the terrorist group calling itself Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine released a statement threatening to execute three American professors who were taken hostage in 1987: Robert Polhill, Alann Steen and Jesse Turner.

Asked by reporters Friday whether he had any optimistic news for the families of the hostages, Bush demurred.

“I don’t want to get the hopes up through a lot of speculation and have them dashed down,” the President said. “I respect the families too much to do that.”

“We don’t have any breakthroughs we can report,” added White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater.

Opponents of the Iranian regime said they see no reason to believe that a hostage release is imminent.

“They use them (hostages) as a card to play for internal political purposes,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the Moujahedeen, the principal Iranian opposition group. “It’s just not in their interest to release the hostages. The weaker the regime gets, the more they need them.”

Bush declined to appear at Friday’s ceremony across from the White House, but he and his wife, Barbara, met for half an hour with Anderson’s sister, Peggy Say.

In a letter to Say, which she released, Bush expressed his “great sorrow at . . . your brother’s merciless imprisonment.”

Bush told reporters: “I’m going to do everything I can to get those hostages out of there, sometimes privately, sometimes publicly.”

Say, who in the past has criticized U.S. officials over the lack of progress on the hostage issue, said she was reassured that Bush is doing all he can. She also said she had “faith” that all the hostages would be released “in the coming weeks.”

The Lafayette Park ceremony was sponsored by “No Greater Love,” a Washington-based support group for the families of the hostages.

Yellow flowers were placed beside the names of the nine Western hostages who are known to have been slain in Lebanon since 1985. Then, young children came forth, one by one, carrying photos of some of the Westerners who are still held hostage in Lebanon. Including the eight Americans, they number at least 16.

In New York, Anderson’s friends and colleagues attended a Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. At press clubs in Tokyo, where Anderson worked for four years, and in Washington and Brussels, journalists gathered to raise a symbolically empty glass as a toast in his honor.

In Paris, former hostages Jean-Paul Kauffman and Roger Auque put on blindfolds and chained themselves to a tree outside the Iranian Embassy to protest Anderson’s captivity. The two were among 10 French hostages released by their captors in Lebanon between 1986 and 1988.

Kauffman and Auque were silent during their protest but said in a statement: “We have taken this action so people know how Terry Anderson is living at this moment. He is chained. He wears a blindfold over his eyes. He must be silent. This is how we were. This is how he is today.”

Meanwhile, in Damascus, former President Jimmy Carter met Friday with Syrian President Hafez Assad and also expressed optimism about the fate of the hostages.

“I see movement now . . . better chances than those I have seen for several years,” Carter said.

In Beirut, local television stations marked the anniversary of Anderson’s capture by playing a videotape of his daughter, Sulome. The child was shown demonstrating her ballet dancing and told her father: “I love you, Daddy. Come home. Please come home. Send me to the circus.”

In a letter published by seven Beirut newspapers, Anderson’s wife, Madeline Bassil, told her husband that she and their daughter also feel like hostages.

“We are in as much captivity, Terry, only our living space is bigger here and it’s shared by millions. . . . A home without a husband or father is not a home, it’s hell.”

The families of the hostages have received little news of their condition other than an occasional--and often distressing--photo.