Word: lebanons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pariah state to return to the community of responsible nations. That message has been delivered for months to Tehran through Swiss officials, other third-country diplomats and private citizens. But the price for such a new beginning is not negotiable: all seven of the American hostages still held in Lebanon must first be freed unconditionally...
...midweek the movement suddenly stopped dead. Hussein Musawi, a Lebanese Shi'ite leader who was instrumental in Polhill's release, blamed the breakdown on the U.S. House of Representatives for passing a nonbinding resolution urging that a united Jerusalem become the capital of Israel. "The Muslims in Lebanon offered a rose only to get a stone thrown on them," said the bearded cleric. The resolution was ill timed as well as contrary to long-standing U.S. policy; it gave Musawi a handy excuse for failing to produce the second hostage release he had forecast...
...many times has one of the shadowy groups that hold Western hostages in Lebanon dangled a wisp of hope for the release of a captive, only to snatch it away? This time hope was not in vain. On Sunday, kidnapers set free American hostage Robert Polhill, 55, one of three American teachers who had been seized more than three years ago from the campus of Beirut University College. Polhill, a New Yorker, was released to Syrian army officers near a seaside hotel in Beirut and then driven to Damascus, where he was handed over to U.S. Ambassador Edward Djerejian...
...fact that the American ! hostages are held by several Shi'ite factions, each with its own sponsors and agendas. Even if Iran and Syria are sincere in their desire to speed the release of the hostages, there are serious questions about how much influence either now has among Lebanon's tangled factions of militant Shi'ite Muslims...
...break in the hostage deadlock in Lebanon would be a sign that President Rafsanjani has been winning the power struggle in Tehran. He still faces opposition from militants led by former Interior Minister Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, who remains fiercely opposed to the release of the hostages because it might lead to improved relations with the U.S. and the return of Western influence in Iran. In the early 1980s, Mohtashemi helped organize the Lebanese Hizballah. After Rafsanjani became President following the death of Ayatullah Khomeini last year, he began seeking to lure Hizballah leaders away from their longtime allegiance to Mohtashemi...