The Hostage Dilemma

In Ireland, Argentina and Chad, three unrelated cadres of terrorists called international attention to their alleged grievances by kidnaping innocent people and threatening to kill them unless certain concessions were made. The terrorists' actions posed once again the classic dilemma of whether or not to meet extortionists' demands. Governments that refuse to be blackmailed must answer to conscience and public opinion if hostages perish. On the other hand, yielding in the name of humanitarianism may only encourage more terrorism. In either case, the safety of the hostages cannot be assured, as the three incidents testify.

P: In Ireland, an army helicopter hovered over ruined castles and abandoned farms in the desolate landscape north of Limerick, searching for signs of a kidnap hideout. The hostage was Tiede Herrema, 54, Dutch manager of a foreign-owned steel plant who had been abducted near Monaleen, four miles from Limerick, apparently by Irish Republican Army extremists. The kidnapers demanded the release of three notorious I.R.A. terrorists, including Bridget Rose Dugdale, 34, the militant heiress and Ph.D. in economics who is serving a nine-year sentence in Limerick prison for hijacking a helicopter and for stealing $20 million worth of paintings from a private collector. One of the kidnapers was believed to be Eddie Gallagher, known I.R.A. Provo and putative father of Dugdale's ten-month-old son.

Announced Dublin's Minister of Justice Patrick Cooney: "Such demands have to be resisted. The best protection against such kidnaping is to let the people who carry them out ascertain that they are quite futile exercises." Nonetheless, a Dutch representative of Herrema's firm was ready to pay an undisclosed sum as ransom and fly the kidnapers out of Ireland. Even if the terrorists were to give up on the release of Dugdale and the other prisoners, the government would have to agree to give the kidnapers safe passage abroad.

While these decisions were being argued, squads of policemen in Ireland, backed by army units, were combing the countryside and watching the border, ports and airports for Herrema and his abductors. Father Donal O'Mahoney, a priest who is reportedly in contact with the kidnapers, declared that Herrema is "by no means safe and the situation is still critical."

P: In Argentina, a representative of the United Nations' High Commission for Refugees thoughtfully brought pizzas and Coke to ten men who were holding 14 of his colleagues at gunpoint in the commission's Buenos Aires office.

The kidnapers were leftist refugees from Chile, who had fled that country after the 1973 military coup against the Allende regime. Dissatisfied with the way they had been treated by the commission, they decided to take matters--and the staff--into their own hands. After seizing the U.N. employees, they issued a statement complaining about the mistreatment of refugees in Argentina. Their grievances were real, but then so was the plight of their hostages. After seven hours, the refugees released eight women and a man known to be epileptic; but they held five others, including Robert Muller, the Swiss director of the commission. "There is no problem," said Muller on the phone from his besieged office. "The matter is being dealt with in Geneva by the High Commissioner for Refugees." His optimism eventually proved correct. At week's end Algeria agreed to accept the refugees, after Sweden and Denmark had turned them down. After the U.N. staffers had been released unharmed, the happy refugees, accompanied by an assortment of wives and children, flew off for Algiers.

P: In Chad, kidnaped French Archaeologist Franc,oise Claustre, 38, was in danger of being killed as negotiations for her ransom between the French government and Hissen Habre, a Maoist Moslem rebel, broke down. Claustre was abducted by Habre 17 months ago while she was studying pre-Islamic tombs in the Tibesti desert of northern Chad. Habre, 32, the head of a ragtag band of about 1,000 rebel tribesmen, asked the French government for $2.4 million for Claustre's safe return. The French, anxious to remain on good terms with the legal government of their former West African colony, were reluctant to pay off the fanatic rebels. When French TV broadcast an appeal by Claustre, who sobbed that the government was guilty of "inaction, cowardice and lies," she became an instant heroine in France. President Valery Giscard d'Estaing announced that he would pay.

Last month Habre received a down payment of $880,000 in cash and 80 tons of military supplies--but no guns--for his minuscule army. The French, however, had not reckoned with Habre's avowed intention of becoming "the Mao of Africa." To realize his ambition he has now asked France for arms and ammunition in exchange for Claustre. The French cannot meet this demand without incurring the wrath of Chad President Felix Malloum. Already Malloum has moved to punish the French for negotiating with the rebels in the first place. As Claustre's life hung in the balance last week, the French began to evacuate their Chad military bases at Malloum's insistence.

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