Word: lebanons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Meanwhile Picco embarked on his secret mission. On several occasions he traveled with Syrian secret police to the border with Lebanon, where he was met by intermediaries waiting in a black Mercedes. Then he was driven -- alone, with his head covered by a cloth bag -- into the Bekaa Valley, in the eastern portion of Lebanon. Some of his meetings with Shi'ite operatives were held in the village of Nabisheet, where he may have spoken to some of the hostages. When asked about that possibility, Picco crisply responds, "Next question...
...absolutely guaranteed," says Picco. "I always met with them alone, and always at night. We met many, many times." Picco needed no reminder that Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite was seized in 1987 under similar circumstances. Says Picco: "Either you are afraid or you are a fool." While in Lebanon, Picco began to move to a different house every night after U.N. sources learned that there was a contract on his life...
...month later, Perez de Cuellar went to Tehran to receive Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani's assurances that he would pressure the radicals to free their captives. At about the same time, Picco arrived in Lebanon to tell the kidnappers that Israel was willing to release Arab prisoners. In return, the Israelis demanded information on seven of their servicemen missing in Lebanon, one of whom is known to be alive...
...Carter publicly displayed his anguish about the Americans seized in the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, and his failure to get them out helped make him a one-term President. Ronald Reagan tried to strike secret deals with so-called moderates in Iran to free the captives in Lebanon and almost wrecked his presidency. George Bush throttled back on public expressions of concern but encouraged diplomatic pressure on the sponsors of state terrorism in the Middle East. The U.S., he insisted, would make no deals for hostages. But he was willing to let U.N. officials and Israel arrange swaps...
That turned out to be the right, or at least the successful, policy. But it is difficult to see that any U.S. initiatives on the hostages' behalf actually forced their release. In the end, the faceless Shi'ite kidnappers under the Hizballah umbrella in Lebanon were simply overtaken by events. The world around them changed so dramatically that Iran and Syria, their main supporters, no longer found them or their captives useful. Some of the lessons gleaned from years of terrorism and hostage taking...