Diplomacy To Deal or Not to Deal

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

No one dares say it out loud. But hopes are rising that some or all of the 15 hostages (nine of them American) being held by terrorists in Lebanon may at last be freed. Not tomorrow; a senior British diplomat predicts that the process of arranging a release will require "months rather than weeks." But he quickly adds that freedom might be expected in "months rather than years." Subject, that is, to one gargantuan if: the terrorists and their mentors in the government of Iran for once must refrain from posing financial or political ransom demands that would force Washington, London and other capitals to say no.

In recent weeks the captors have been hinting that this time they just might be more reasonable. Since agreeing to a cease-fire in its war with Iraq, Tehran has been putting out feelers about ending its diplomatic isolation and obtaining Western help to rebuild its devastated economy. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful speaker of the Majlis (parliament), has shown signs of recognizing that holding on to the hostages works against both goals.

Last week a Lebanese terrorist group released a picture of three American hostages playing cards with a fourth hostage, an Indian professor, and said it would let them go if the U.S. would support the nine-month-old Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied territories. Though that demand is patently unacceptable -- should terrorists conclude they could change American foreign policy by taking hostages, the kidnapings would only increase -- it differed considerably in tone from earlier threats to kill the captives. Another terrorist group freed Rudolf Cordes, a West German businessman, two weeks ago without exacting "any political price" -- or so the Bonn government insisted. Cordes' kidnapers had originally demanded freedom for the Hammadi brothers, two terrorists being held in Germany. But Abbas Hammadi is serving a 13-year prison term in Dusseldorf, and Mohammed Ali Hammadi is on trial in Frankfurt for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA jet and the murder of one of its passengers, a U.S. Navy diver.

If Iran and the terrorists continue to back away from extreme demands, however, they will raise again a torturous dilemma for which American and other Western officials have never found a satisfactory answer. Should they negotiate at all for the release of hostages? If so, when and with whom? Most important, how can they persuade the captors to release hostages without making concessions that seem to reward terrorism and encourage more hostage taking?

Washington so far has been trying to play it cool, avoiding the emotionalism that in the past has paralyzed U.S. foreign policy and led to the Iran arms- sale fiasco. Officials sketch a three-part approach. First, the U.S. will talk informally with anyone, anytime. "We keep in touch," says National Security Adviser Colin Powell; he will not say with whom. Second, Washington will officially negotiate only with an "authoritative" representative of the Tehran government, and that stage has not yet been reached. Says one State Department official: "We hear from people who say they know somebody who knows somebody in the Iranian government who can help with the hostages. Well, we've been burned on that one before, so we're not interested." Third, if negotiations do begin, the U.S. will refuse to make any concessions to win release of the hostages. "No deals," says White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater.

In part, this is a sensible policy. A compassionate nation must always probe for any opportunity to win freedom for any of its citizens held hostage. But substantive negotiations with terrorist bands would only swell their prestige and seem to legitimize their bloody operations. Thus the U.S. is fully ) justified in negotiating only with the sovereign governments that back terrorists, even though that policy may result in dragging out the captivity of the hostages for agonizing months. Accounts differ as to how much control Iran has over the Muslim extremists in Lebanon. West German experience indicates that it is strong but not absolute; Bonn officials hint that Tehran had to exert heavy pressure for months on the terrorists to get them to let Cordes go.

The no-concessions policy, however, if interpreted literally, would leave an American negotiator nothing to do but continually demand the hostages' unconditional release. In fact, few nations have been that inflexible in such talks. Says Warren Christopher, who helped negotiate the 1981 release of the American hostages held in the Tehran embassy: "The essence of the matter is whether you make a concession that might imply you'd do it again and that encourages subsequent hostage taking." Payment of ransom, whether in cash or weapons and however disguised, does precisely that. On the other hand, a one- shot concession that in its nature could not be repeated would be less dangerous. Roger Fisher, who has advised the Government in previous hostage situations, says that the concession, if possible, ought to be something to which the adversary would have a legitimate claim if it had never taken any hostages.

It is possible to foresee a deal that would meet those conditions. The U.S. still retains billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets, and Iran is pressing claims to them before the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in the Hague. The U.S. could offer to speed up those proceedings without making an outright dollars-for-hostages offer that would smack of ransom. Washington could also insist on release of the hostages as a precondition for normalizing diplomatic relations with Iran and easing its opposition to favorable treatment of Iran by bodies such as the International Monetary Fund.

Both steps could be justified in the absence of any hostage negotiations if Iran, in return, would slacken its intense hostility to the West. At best, the release of the hostages could be presented as an almost incidental part of a general Washington-Tehran rapprochement or even as a major concession by the Iranians, agreed to as the inescapable price of smoother relations with the West.

Such a deal that is not quite a deal could take many months to arrange. But the U.S. had better evolve a policy that goes beyond an endless intoning of - "No concessions." Whatever the fate of the hostages now held in Lebanon, the sad likelihood is that there will be other hostages in coming years to test the inventiveness of American diplomacy.

With reporting by Dean Fischer/Cairo and Jay Peterzell/Washington, with other bureaus