Blackmail in Vienna

Jordan's King Hussein may reasonably feel confident about being able to handle the fedayeen. Others have good reason to fear their random outbursts of terrorism. Among the guerrillas' priority targets are Soviet Jews emigrating to Israel at the rate of 30,000 a year. Twice this year fedayeen groups set out to attack Schoenau Castle in Vienna where the refugees, who travel from Russia to Austria by train, are quartered midway in their exodus. Both times the attackers were spotted beforehand and arrested. Two months ago, another terrorist band killed four innocent travelers at Athens airport when it confused a TWA plane loading for New York with another TWA plane boarding passengers for Israel.

Last week the terrorists tried again -- and this time succeeded. When a passenger train en route from Moscow to Vienna via Warsaw stopped at the Czechoslovak city of Bratislava, two Arabs climbed aboard. They were carrying suitcases that turned out to be loaded with submachine guns and grenades.

When the train, carrying 39 Soviet Jews among its 70 passengers, stopped at the Austrian border town of Marchegg, the Arabs struck. They pulled the guns out of their valises, wounded one person, and took five Jews and one customs official aboard the train as hostages.

Two of their prisoners managed to escape in the confusion. But when the train stopped at Vienna, the others were hustled aboard a Volkswagen bus owned by the Austrian railroad. With the captured customs officer at the wheel, the bus rushed to Schwechat airport on the outskirts of the city. The Austrians were so anxious to avoid bloodshed that police cars, alerted to what had happened, escorted the bus to the airport instead of trying to stop it.

The terrorists identified themselves as "the Eagles of the Palestine Revolution." That sounded like yet another unknown guerrilla splinter group, but Middle East sources reported that the kidnapers were almost certainly members of the extremist Black September movement. At the airport, the terrorists demanded that Austrian officials produce a passenger plane to carry the remaining Jewish hostages -- two men and a woman -- to an unspecified destination in the Arab world. But Austrian officials, after consulting with Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, closed the airport and stubbornly refused to let the kidnapers and their hostages leave.

The fedayeen, hunched in the captured VW with a grenade on the dashboard and the terrified hostages cowering behind them, finally wore down the Austrians. After several hours of negotiations, Chancellor Kreisky authorized a light plane to fly the two fedayeen to Yugoslavia. The plane subsequently flew to Dubrovnik and on to Sicily, Sardinia and Malta while the terrorists tried desperately to gain permission to land in Libya or Algeria.

For the release of the hostages, Kreisky, a Jew, also made an incredible concession: the government agreed to close down Schoenau Castle and no longer let Israel use Austria as a way station for emigrating Soviet Jews. If he holds to his word, the two fedayeen responsible for the Israeli-Arab conflict's first train-jacking had scored an astounding coup indeed.

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