Word: berrie
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...would insist that not 39 but 46 American hostages be released "unharmed and unconditionally." In addition to those aboard TWA Flight 847, he was referring to the seven "forgotten hostages" who had been kidnaped one by one from the streets of Beirut during the previous 16 months. Berri has insisted that he did not have any control over the seven and did not even know where they are being held...
Switzerland convened an emergency Cabinet meeting on Thursday and, according to a Foreign Ministry source, "informed Berri that we would be happy to take the American hostages in our Beirut embassy but on our conditions, not his." The Swiss conditions: the hostages would be flown immediately from Beirut to Switzerland, and Bern could then set them free "at the time of our choosing...
...Syria as the most promising intermediary. Even though Syria is far from an ally, Washington was anxious to get the hostages out of Beirut and into Damascus, where the U.S. has a well-staffed embassy that would be dealing with a full-fledged government. (The Lebanese government, in which Berri is Minister of Justice, exists to a great extent only on paper.) Assad had been in contact with both Shultz and Reagan and promised to try to play a helpful role. Since his troops occupy strategic portions of Lebanon, he has influence with all factions in that nation's internal...
Assad managed to extract an important clarification from each side. No happier than France or Switzerland to act as a warden over U.S. prisoners, he - persuaded Berri to stop demanding that the hostages remain in Syria until all of Israel's detainees were released. Conversely, from Washington he won an assurance that those detainees would be granted their freedom. Ironically, in the same Friday speech that evidently angered Berri, Reagan carefully reaffirmed that fact. "Israel had always intended to release them and had made that very clear," said the President...
Although it would run into unexpected delays, the arrangement had been settled on by Friday night. Assad by then had emerged as the intermediary who would take custody of the hostages from Berri and quickly set them free. Berri had agreed to hand over the Americans without any prior or even simultaneous release of the prisoners in Atlit. That would save face for the U.S. and Israel; both countries had insisted that any outright swap would constitute a payoff for terrorism. It was assumed that Israel would begin "unilaterally" setting the Atlit prisoners free as soon as the American hostages...