Word: shying
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...effort started to pick up in August, when British journalist John McCarthy was released. He was carrying a message from Islamic Jihad: if Israel would release more than 300 Arab detainees, including Sheik Abdul Karim Obeid, a Shi'ite Muslim cleric kidnapped by Israeli commandos in 1989, the group would be willing to free its remaining captives. Using Picco as a go-between, the two sides began exchanging information about the condition of their prisoners...
Although the American hostages were innocent bystanders in the Middle East, their agonizing captivity became the nation's ordeal. They were kidnapped only because they were Americans, men who represented what Iran and its Shi'ite proteges called "the Great Satan," and their fate became an issue for all Americans, especially for three U.S. Presidents...
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...
...forces at play were beyond American control. The surge of Islamic fundamentalism that carried the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini to power struck a resonant chord with Shi'ite organizations in Lebanon. So did the Iranian mobs that stormed into the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 hostages for 444 days...