Waite's Secret Mission

By William E. Smith

Once again, Nehme Yafet Street in West Beirut was a battleground. Gunmen from rival Shi'ite Muslim and Druze militias crouched in doorways and fired bursts from automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades into the darkness. Four floors above the fierce firefight, Terry Waite, the special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, was trapped with staff members of the Associated Press. A giant of a man, who stands 6 ft. 7 in. and weighs 258 lbs., the bearded Waite, 46, was in Beirut to seek the release of four of the American hostages held by Muslim extremists. As bullets chipped the walls of the A.P. bureau, Waite seized the opportunity to take a shower. "If you can't do anything else," he explained, "you might as well make use of the time."

Waite himself had become a temporary captive of the violence that so often engulfs the city. He had planned to fly to Cyprus that night and on to New York, but the bloody street battles delayed his departure. On Friday morning he told reporters that although he had made progress in his efforts to free the hostages and felt that "a good measure of mutual trust has been established," he still faced "grave difficulties" in his quest. Finally, on Sunday, he escaped the street fighting and headed to New York City, where he was scheduled to report to U.S. officials on his progress before returning to Beirut this week.

Since his arrival three days earlier--it was his second visit to Beirut in less than a week--Waite said, he had met with the kidnapers twice at secret locations in the city. Waite said he was satisfied "beyond all doubt" that he was dealing with the real kidnapers, believed to be members of Islamic Jihad, a shadowy Shi'ite Muslim extremist movement. "The situation remains very dangerous," he emphasized. "False steps, however well intentioned, that interfere with the process I have started could end in disaster."

Some 1,500 miles across the Mediterranean, another disaster was in the making as an EgyptAir Boeing 73.7, en route from Athens to Cairo with approximately 100 people on board, was hijacked last Saturday and forced down at Luqa Airport on Malta. Demanding fuel to continue on to an unspecified destination, the hijackers, who identified themselves as members of a group called Egypt's Revolution, threatened a systematic execution of passengers until the plane was refueled. By Sunday morning, the Maltese government had confirmed the death of one woman, tentatively identified as Nancy Stevens, 20. The death toll was expected to rise. There were reports that six others, including one of the three Americans believed to be on board, had been injured. At one point, a hijacker had threatened in English, "I am going to look for another American passport."

Within twelve hours of the hijacking over the Greek island of Milos, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had dispatched a C-130 Hercules transport filled with anti-terrorist commandos to Luqa Airport. He also placed the Egyptian army on full alert, moving troops toward the border Egypt shares with Libya, reflecting Mubarak's apparent suspicion that Libyans were involved in the hijacking. Sunday evening, commandos stormed the aircraft in an attempt to free the hostages. The unconfirmed toll: as many as 50 people dead. Meanwhile, the first accounts of the tense scene aboard the aircraft began to trickle out. Egyptian Loretana Chafik, 20, one of eleven captives who had been released, said that there were three hijackers. "They didn't look like Egyptians," she said. "They looked like Palestinians or Lebanese." She said that the terrorists had shot an Egyptian security guard on board and had injured both of the hostesses. Another released passenger said that a security guard had shot one of the hijackers.

As Washington continued to monitor the evolving hijack crisis, Waite was pursuing his own mission. His diplomatic odyssey began in early November, when letters addressed to President Reagan and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Robert Runcie, were delivered to the A.P. bureau in Beirut. The letters called for renewed efforts to secure the release of hostages held in Lebanon. They were signed by four of the missing Americans: Terry Anderson, 38, A.P.'s chief Middle East correspondent; the Rev. Lawrence Jenco, 50, head of Catholic Relief Services in Lebanon; David Jacobsen, 54, director of the American University Hospital; and Thomas Sutherland, 53, dean of agriculture at the university.

Waite said last week that he had been assured that the four were "O.K." But he seemed to have no information concerning the fate of two other missing Americans, Peter Kilburn, 60, a librarian at the American University who disappeared in December 1984, and William Buckley, 57, a U.S. embassy political officer who was seized in March 1984; Buckley was reported killed by his captors in October, following the Israeli air raid on Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunisia. Nor did Waite appear to have information on the four Frenchmen, one Briton and one Italian who are also missing in Beirut. Two months ago, at the request of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Waite played a still unspecified role in the release of another U.S. hostage in Beirut, the Rev. Benjamin Weir, 61, who had served as a missionary in Lebanon for more than 30 years.

Though Waite's name is hardly a household word in the U.S., he is well known in Britain as "the gentle giant" and as "the Anglican Henry Kissinger" for his daring negotiating feats. Waite's first successful mediation effort came in 1981, when he traveled to Iran in the hope of securing the release of four Britons who were being held by the Iranian authorities. He quietly gained the Britons' freedom after meeting with the Khomeini government. In 1984 relations between Britain and Libya hit rock bottom after a London policewoman was killed in St. James's Square by a gunman firing from the Libyan embassy at anti-Gaddafi demonstrators. When authorities arrested suspected Libyan militants, Gaddafi retaliated by locking up four British citizens. The families of the detainees appealed to Waite, who then made two trips to Tripoli for talks with the Libyan leader.

The second of the meetings took place on Christmas Day at a Bedouin tent in the desert. After seeing Waite, Gaddafi agreed to let the Britons go. The inducement Waite offered: a promise that the Church of England would establish a hot line that Libyans residing in the United Kingdom could use if they felt they were being harassed.

An Anglican lay associate, Waite was drawn to the church, he has said, for "its passionate coolness, its mixture of authority and freedom." The son of a policeman, he grew up in the northwestern English village of Styal. He took a degree at a church college and headed to Uganda in 1968 as an adviser to the local archbishop. He and his wife Frances, who have three daughters and a son, were once held at gunpoint during a mass expulsion of foreigners following Idi Amin Dada's takeover in 1971. After working in Rome as an adviser to the Vatican on African missionary activities, Waite accepted his present post with Runcie in 1980.

Though he has met with American officials over the past two weeks, it is not yet clear whether Waite has anything of substance to offer the kidnapers in exchange for their freeing the Americans. The captors have continued to demand as a quid pro quo the release of 17 Shi'ites jailed in Kuwait for terrorist attacks on the French and American embassies and other installations. So far, the U.S. and Kuwait have been unwilling to consider a deal.

Waite's mission was not made easier by the explosion of renewed violence in Lebanon. Flying cover for a routine patrol in the Bekaa Valley, Israeli F-15s shot down two threatening Syrian MiG-23Ss over Syrian territory. In West Beirut, tanks and rockets were being used in the bitter fighting between the Druze militia of Walid Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party and its erstwhile ally, the Shi'ite Amal militia, headed by Nabih Berri. By Friday, police estimated that 44 people had been killed and 200 wounded.

It is in this surreal political landscape that Waite must operate. The very fact that the four Americans were allowed, and perhaps encouraged, by their captors to send letters to Reagan and Runcie suggests that this particular band of kidnapers may be interested in negotiations.

From his vantage point overlooking the hit-and-run militia battles in the streets below, Waite shouted an apt observation last week from an open window. When a television reporter called up to him, "What do you plan to do now?" Waite replied, "Take cover. This seems to be normal life in Beirut." Indeed it was, and so was the problem of the kidnapings to which Waite had so boldly addressed himself. --By William E. Smith. Reported by Dean Fischer/Cairo and Erik Amfitheatrof/Malta

With reporting by Reported by Dean Fischer/Cairo, Erik Amfitheatrof/Malta