Word: swaps
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There was some speculation that Waite's negotiations this time involved hostages other than Americans, and perhaps went beyond Lebanon. According to a knowledgeable Israeli source, Assad was attempting a "multinational swap," a kind of coordinated release involving not just U.S. hostages but possibly those from Britain, France and Italy, and even an Israeli airman held in Lebanon. In Israel, the counterpart would presumably be the freeing of some or all of 108 Shi'ites being held in southern Lebanon by the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army militia. It was not clear whether a grand swap would also involve other...
Kuwait has flatly refused to cooperate in any such trade, and last December denied Waite's application for a visa. Washington has declined to bring pressure on the Kuwaitis to reconsider. Evidently as part of an effort to push the Reagan Administration to force a swap, Islamic Jihad over the past 13 months has released two of its American prisoners, Father Jenco, and the Rev. Benjamin Weir, a Presbyterian missionary. Both had been held captive for more than a year. Waite had a hand in the two releases, though he has never spelled out his exact role...
Waite's latest mission to Beirut is his most difficult, especially if it involves a multinational swap that must await the approval of several conflicting parties. He has proved in the past that he has the patience, stamina and staying power needed to hold hostage negotiations. His success in winning the release of Jacobsen sparked new hope that he will finally be able to conclude the long Beirut hostage ordeal...
American conservatives grumbled that the deal amounted to the swap of an innocent hostage, Daniloff, for a real spy, Zakharov, a trade the Reagan Administration had sworn never to countenance. Republican Presidential Hopeful Jack Kemp charged that the Administration had set a "terrible precedent" by letting Moscow get away with hostage taking, and Conservative Caucus Chairman Howard Phillips expressed himself more pungently to the New York Daily News. Said Phillips: "This Administration's foreign policy has been to kiss the Russian bear's bottom, and he keeps turning the other cheek." Administration officials replied that the U.S. had secured...
...return to Moscow to lay flowers once again on the grave of his ancestor, about whom he is planning a book. But Daniloff insisted that, unlike Zakharov, he had come through the experience with his honor unsmudged. Yet was not the complex arrangement merely a fig leaf disguising the swap of Daniloff for a spy? "In my case," Daniloff responded, "the investigation into the charges against me was concluded. There was no trial, and I left as an ordinary free American citizen. In Zakharov's case, there was a trial, and he received a sentence. I do not believe that...