Word: cuellar
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Amid other signs of movement on the hostage issue, Iran's foreign minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, called for all parties to cooperate with U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who is leading diplomatic efforts to free the captives...
While the contours of the deal seemed clear, the mechanics posed nettlesome questions. Among the most vexing was a condition contained in the letter former British hostage John McCarthy brought to Perez de Cuellar from Islamic Jihad, a fundamentalist Shi'ite faction, operating under the banner of the pro-Iranian Hizballah, that holds several Westerners. It called for "the release of our freedom fighters from prisons in occupied Palestine and Europe." To whom that referred was anybody's guess -- and for whom Islamic Jihad presumed to speak was no more apparent. Was this a bargaining point or an implacable demand...
...Perez de Cuellar attempted to untangle that knot, he also dealt with the immediate question of Israel's seven MIAs. Jerusalem vowed to release no prisoners until it had concrete information about the soldiers' whereabouts. In turn, a senior Hizballah source in Beirut warned, "No more Westerners will be released until Israel frees at least some prisoners...
...Greece, five in Italy, three in Spain, three in Sweden and one in Switzerland. Most of these men have been convicted of crimes; the others are awaiting trial for acts ranging from the importation of explosives to the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro. Perez de Cuellar signaled that the release of any of these prisoners would not be considered; he called them a "legal problem," as distinct from the "political problem" of the hostages...
...before the Middle East peace conference that is expected to be convened in October. From their distant captivity, some of the Western hostages sent word through recently released hostages that even they believe an end to their ordeal is finally at hand. Perhaps most promising of all, Perez de Cuellar -- the point man in all of this -- is increasingly tight-lipped. As diplomats know, when negotiations are truly moving forward, the dealmakers usually have less and less...