The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. These are the day's top headlines. Palestinian hijackers of an Italian cruise ship may have killed two American passengers. In Puerto Rico, more than 80 people have died in mudslides and floods. Congress worked on a stop-gap borrowing measure to keep the U.S. Treasury solvent. Details of these and other stories in a moment. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: After the news summary, we'll go to the cruise ship hijacking with a look at who the Palestinian hijackers are and aren't, the military options available to the Italians and the debate over whether to use them or negotiate. Then there's an essay by Jim Fisher on the irony of a bumper crop's being bad news for the farmer, and finally an unusual personal report on an unusual trek through the mountains of Russia.News Summary

MacNEIL: Palestinian terrorists who hijacked an Italian cruise ship in the Mediterranean yesterday claimed today they had killed two American passengers. There was no confirmation of the claim made by a hijacker in radio conversation with Syrian officials. In a later radio communication monitored in the port of Beirut, a man who said he was the captain of the vessel reported that "everybody is very good on the ship." The 23,000-ton luxury liner Achille Lauro was seized yesterday after leaving Alexandria, Egypt, for Port Said. Estimates of the number of Americans on board ranged from two to 28. The hijackers, calling themselves the Palestine Liberation Front, a dissident group of the PLO, demanded the release of 50 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and some in other countries. Here is a report by Rod Stephens of Visnews.

ROD STEPHENS, (Visnews) [voice-over]: The Achille Lauro had only just left port at Alexandria when the Palestinian guerrillas seized control. Still on board were 80 passengers and more than 340 crew. The vast majority of the tourists had been on a day tour to Cairo and escaped the hijack. The guerrillas are demanding that Israel release 50 of their compatriots from prison and have said if their demands aren't met they will execute the passengers one by one and blow up the ship. It's already believed that the guerrillas are beginning to carry out their first threat, the threat to shoot the passengers. No reports have yet established exactly where the hostages are being held on board the luxury liner, but security specialists believe it will be difficult for a small band of guerrillas to control a large number of people on a vessel the size of the Achille Lauro. Already the Italian government has sent the largest ship in its navy in chase of the luxury liner. The cruiser Vittorio Veneto has plotted an intercept course. Last time she went into action was during NATO joint exercises in the Ionian Sea in 1984. Several countries, including Italy, have units trained to mount assaults on hijacked vessels, but it's not known whether members of that group are on board the Vittorio Veneto. From Naples, Lauro, the company that owns the vessel, has been monitoring the situation. Director, Captain Enrico Amato says the liner can stay at sea for quite some time.

Capt. ENRICO AMATO, Director, Lauro Shipping Co.: We can run around with Vessel for 10 days, maybe more, it depends on from use of the vessel. If the vessel go up and down, as going now, maybe can stay at sea more than 10 days. I hope that everybody will be quiet, will be calm, and I hope that the matter can be solved politically.

STEPHENS [voice-over]: Weeping, the wives of many of the Achille Lauro crew wait outside the company offices for news of their husbands. They can only hope that the guerrillas will give up before they carry out all their threats.

MacNEIL: Early today the ship approached the Syrian coast, but the Syrian government refused permission to enter their territorial waters. The ship turned west, but tonight was reported about 150 miles southwest of Beirut. One of the hijackers contacted Beirut port radio saying he wanted to negotiate with Israel. In Israel, officials said they had contacted the governments of Italy, the U.S. and Egypt, but Prime Minister Shimon Peres insisted no government had asked Israel to release Palestinian prisoners.

SHIMON PERES, Israeli Prime Minister: The ship is not in the territorial water of Israel. We didn't get any demands, and we don't have to answer it, and Israel will continue to fight terrorism.

MacNEIL: In addition to the Italian ship, ships of the U.S. Sixth Fleet are in the eastern Mediterranean and their flagship, the U.S.S. Coronado, sailed from her base north of Naples, Italy. The U.S. Navy would not say whether the ships were being moved because of the hijacking. Jim?

LEHRER: President Reagan termed the hijacking "a most ridiculous thing." He told reporters the Italians were not the only ones concerned over resolving it. He said that all governments, particularly those that have passengers on the ship, are vitally interested. A fuller U.S. reaction came from the State Department and spokesman Bernard Kalb.

BERNARD KALB, State Department spokesman: We are in close contact with various governments. Nothing I can say, obviously, about the contents of any of these diplomatic exchanges. We deplore this terrorist attack and the cycle of violence that continues against innocent victims. We believe that it is a radical group. Insofar as relations with the PLO, that seems to be unclear. But it appears to be a splinter group of the PFLP general command.

LEHRER: There was one piece of good hostage news today. Two British women kidnapped in Beirut 13 days ago were released. They were turned loose on the street near a hotel in Moslem west Beirut. The women are Amanda McGrath, who is 28, a teacher of English,and 45-year-old Hazel Moss, a former restaurant manager. They were reported today to be shaken but unharmed and uncertain as to who their kidnappers were.

MacNEIL: Puerto Rico's worse flooding in 50 years has claimed 84 lives, at last count, with still more deaths feared as a result of three days of torrential rains. Commonwealth Governor Rafael Hernandez Colon declared a state of emergency after touring some of the worst-hit parts of the island. Today rescue workers used their bare hands to dig through mudslides that may have buried up to 150 people as they slept in their beds. Two hundred homes in the south coast town of Ponce were in the path of a wave of mud that broke off from a nearby mountainside. Four hundred homes in an industrial shanty town were also buried by mud and water, although most inhabitants had been able to escape. Washed out roads and bridges and downed communication lines delayed rescue efforts by the Army, Coast Guard and Red Cross.

LEHRER: There were two developments on the international money and trade front today. In Seoul, Korea, Treasury Secretary James Baker laid out the details of a United States proposal to assist financially strapped Third World countries. The plan calls for a $29-billion loan fund to come from government and private sources. To get the money, developing countries would have to adopt new policies aimed at reducing inflation and other economic problems.

And, here in Washington, House Republicans announced an alternative to the Democrats' trade bill. The GOP plan would make it possible to sell Alaskan oil to Japan, among other things. It does not include penalties for countries like Japan with a surplus trade balance with the United States, as proposed by the Democrats.

MacNEIL: The U.S. Treasury did not run out of money today, but decided it could juggle things until tomorrow and thus avoid the first default in U.S. history. Meanwhile, Senate leaders worked on a stopgap measure to extend the government's borrowing authority for 10 days. That would give time to work through the proposal that has paralyzed the Senate, a move to mandate a balanced budget by 1991. Senate Democrats have filibustered to keep that proposal from a vote. That created the default crisis, since the balanced budget idea is an amendment to the bill to raise the nation's debt ceiling and thus extend the Treasury's credit. In the House, Majority Leader Thomas O'Neill blamed administration economic policy, saying, "If the Reagan policies were sane, we would not be searching so desperately to find a straitjacket."

LEHRER: And that ends our summary of the news of this day. Now we go back for a longer look at the cruise ship hijacking. We hear essayist Jim Fisher talk about bumper crops on the farm, and we see a report on an unusual trek through the Russian mountains. Hijacked

MacNEIL: Well, as we've heard, yet another Middle East terrorist drama has forced itself onto center stage. Palestinian terrorists have captured an Italian cruise ship with more than 400 passengers and crew on board. There are reports that two passengers, both thought to be Americans, may have been executed by the 12 terrorists who are demanding the release of 50 Palestinians held in Israel and some in other countries.

We look at this story tonight from a number of different angles. First, the hijackers. Who are they, and who influences them? For that we turn to Alan Hart, author of the recently published book, Arafat: Terrorist or Peacemaker? He is the former chief foreign correspondent of Britain's Independent Television News, andis now a consultant on international affairs, specializing in the Middle East.

Alan, what is the Palestine Liberation Front, and how big is it?

ALAN HART: Well, to be honest, Bob, not an awful lot is known about it, but first of all, these are the facts as we know them. First of all, it's a very insignificant Palestinian organization. It always was insignificant. It became even more insignificant in 1983 when it divided, this small splinter group divided when there was the general revolt against Arafat's leadership because of his preference for politics and compromise. It split into two wings, and the leader of one is a man called Abull Abbas. Now, he remained an Arafat loyalist, and the leader of the second wing is a man called Talat Yakub, and that took itself off to Damascus and aligned itself with the various PLO dissident groups which were anti-Arafat. And all the signs are that it's that element, the Talat Yakub element, that has joined up with all the other anti-Arafat groups that are behind this hijack.

MacNEIL: So when Arafat says, as he did today, that the PLO had nothing to do with this and he condemned the hijacking, he's speaking the truth, is he?

Mr. HART: I think Arafat is speaking the truth, but I think what is worse, I think that Israel's intelligence people and their politicians know that he's speaking the truth. Their intelligence services are very good; they will know exactly who is behind this operation. But the whole point is that it's Israel's aim now to put all the blame on Arafat. In the days and the weeks even leading up to the attack on Tunis, Prime Minister Peres, Defense Minister Rabin, they were singling out Arafat to vilify him, to present him as the source of all evil on the Palestinian side. Now, they know that's not true. But that's the game that they're now playing.

MacNEIL: What would the motive of this so-called Palestine Liberation Front be in seizing this ship?

Mr. HART: Well, I think it's a most interesting question, because I don't think the chief motive is necessarily the release of hostages. I think behind this is what is happening throughout the Palestinian diaspora, and this is a frustration that 10 years of politics and compromise offered by Arafat has got them nowhere. The truth of the matter, Bob, is that I'd say something like 95 of all Palestinian people are loyal to Arafat; they support him. But they've also been saying for 10 years, "We'll give you time, Arafat, to show us that you can get something from politics and compromise, but we don't believe you." Recently there was a sort of vague feeling of optimism; when King Hussein came here in May, the Reagan administration made him certain promises that there would be an advancement, Arafat began to feel that the Americans were serious, Hussein thought they were serious. Now it all seems to be collapsing, which is why Mrs. Thatcher in Britain has given it a push and is inviting two PLO people to London. But anyway, there is an intense frustration now, and I think the way to interpret what we are seeing now is a sign of what is going to happen more and more in the coming years if Israel cannot be persuaded or obliged to make peace on terms that the Palestinians can accept.

MacNEIL: Would these hijackers -- would their motive be to speed up Arafat's negotiations with Israel, or to impede them and obstruct them because they don't believe in negotiation?

Mr. HART: I think they do not -- this particular wing of the PLF, I think, does not believe in negotiations. So, paradoxically, it has the same objective as Israel now, which veryoften happens when Palestinian lunatics do their own little separate thing outside the PLO umbrella. I think they want to sabotage these negotiations.

MacNEIL: I see. Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Now the military options available to resolve this. What are they and what is the likelihood of their being used? We get that from Edward Luttwak, a military strategy and national security expert. He is a senior fellow at the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies and the author of the recent book, The Pentagon and the Art of War. What are the realistic military options, Mr. Luttwak?

EDWARD LUTTWAK: Well, the Italians happen to have perhaps the best frogman commando force unit in the Western world, with a splendid record and have very high standards. The Italians also have a first-class special operations unit within their paratroop brigade, which is certainly capable of taking on this sort of problem. It is, of course, very difficult to do anything to a moving ship. More important, the Italians have a record in dealing with terrorism. They wouldn't negotiate when terrorists kidnapped a prime minister.

LEHRER: That was Mr. Moro.

Mr. LUTTWAK: Mr. Moro. And killed him. Absolutely refused to negotiate with them. And they have acted whenever action was possible. When Dozier was a hostage --

LEHRER: American General Dozier, right?

Mr. LUTTWAK: Yes, when our General Dozier was kidnapped and the Italians found out where he was, they didn't agonize over it; they went in, busted the door and took him out. They were willing to take the risk that somebody would get killed, and they have not shown this delusion in the practice that it is possible to carry out commando operations without casualties.

LEHRER: Well, let's go back to the operation itself. You say it would be difficult to stage such an operation on a moving ship, so step number one is to stop the ship, right? How do you do that without getting people killed on the ship?

Mr. LUTTWAK: Well, not necessarily. If the ship stops it can be attacked by people swimming to it, covertly, obviously, let's say at night. Frogmen at night approach the ship, scale it, which is not easy but can be done, and then go in, kill the hijackers, liberate the hostages and so on. If the ship -- and there's every reason to wait until the ship stops. But let's assume that for some reason the Italians feel compelled to attack the ship when it's underway -- let's say the hijackers start killing hostages, they might do that -- then they will have to do it by helicopter, approach and assault. It's very, obviously, risky, but the Italians, I think, are the kind of people who are likely to do it.

LEHRER: What kind of risk? Is there any way to evaluate that?

Mr. LUTTWAK: Unpredictable. Unpredictable risk. The Italian belief in dealing with the domestic terrorists has been that the most dangerous thing is to agonize and not to act and to sit around saying, "The risks are incalculable." In fact you have to act, to establish a record of action which then deters other terrorists. And in this case imagine, if you will, a ship underway at some decent speed; a helicopter comes overhead, hijackers hear the helicopter long before the people in the helicopter can do anything to them. Then it would have to sort of make a descent on a deck which will be very hazardous, very dangerous for the people jumping off a helicopter onto a moving ship. Then there is a combat phase where anything can happen. It depends how skilled these hijackers are, how well armed they are, how positioned they are at the very moment it happens. The one thing the record of experience shows is that hijackers always claim that they have the place wired, the building, the airplane, for explosion and they will detonate at the moment any attempt is made to rescue. Experience has shown that these detonations don't take place. Every one of the assaults that we can remember -- I don't know, Mogadishu, Entebbe, whatever -- always featured this claim that a place was wired and it would blow up as soon as anybody arrived. I don't think -- this has never happened, and it's certainly less likely to happen when you're dealing with something as big as a ship.

LEHRER: What, as a matter of fact, has been the relationship between the Italian government and the Palestinian movement?

Mr. LUTTWAK: Well, the Italians, for whatever reason, have staked out a very differentiated position vis-a-vis the Palestinians -- differentiated from the West in general, the United States in particular. When that very large Italian contingent went into Lebanon, remember, we had a battalion --

LEHRER: They were part of the peacekeeping force.

Mr. LUTTWAK: That's right. We had a battalion of Marines, the French had a couple of thousand -- they had as many people -- more people, I think, than anybody else, and their main presence were not soldiers but rather a field hospital which primarily served the Palestinians. And, moreover, the Italian government said that the Italian contingent was in Lebanon exclusively to protect the Palestinians against further attacks upon them and so on. Moreover, when Arafat, immediately afterwards Arafat was received in Italy, he was embraced and kissed by the Italian president, and in general the Italians have been very, very favorable to the Palestinians. Hence, they are going to be -- they are, I'm sure, extremely angry and upset at the fact that their kindness has been rewarded by this violence, and they're not going to be moved by arguments as to the fact -- you know, general responsibilities and all the rest of it. They're going to treat it as a group of -- as massive ingratitude. And I think that it will cost the Palestinians a great deal in Italy.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Underlying this and every terrorist hostage-taking is one basic dilemma. Should a government consider giving in to the hostage-takers' demands? For more on this we turn to Jeremy Levin, former Cable News Network Beirut bureau chief who was himself a hostage in Lebanon for nearly a year, and Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine, who writes frequently on foreign policy matters.

Mr. Podhoretz, you were here with us during the TWA hijacking, and you said at that time, no deals. Do you think the same now? What do you recommend?

NORMAN PODHORETZ: First of all, I want to register a protest against the preposterous assertion made by Mr. Hart that Israel is responsible for this act of criminal violence by a Palestinian faction, and I also wish to register a protest against the characterization of Arafat as a statesman pursuing moderate policies for the last 10 years. Innumerable acts of terrorism and oceans of blood have been shed and perpetrated under Arafat's leadership of the PLO. Having said that, I can go on to answer your question specifically. I think this hijacking is confirmation of the thesis that some of us were propounding during the last hijacking and the one before that, that a victory for terrorism is an incentive to further terrorism. And I think we see the fruits of the weak response the last time around, that is, during the TWA hijacking, and alsothe assault on the Marine barracks in Beirut and other such aggressions directed specifically against the United States. I don't think that the terrorists of this world have been taught the lesson that terrorism does not pay; on the contrary. I think they've been taught the lesson that it does pay.

MacNEIL: What would teach them that lesson this time?

Mr. PODHORETZ: Well, once one of these things is in motion, of course, nothing is possible that does not risk the shedding of innocent blood. Therefore, policy has to be framed in such a way as to make at least less and less likely that such things will happen again. I still believe in this instance, as I did in the past, that terrorists should not be negotiated with, and they should certainly not be allowed to win, whether in terms of the particular demands they make or in terms of some compromise demand they're willing to settle for in the course of negotiations.

MacNEIL: Jeremy Levin, what's your reaction to that? Terrorists should not be negotiated with?

JEREMY LEVIN: Terrorism is a symbol of a polarizing situation, and political polarizing situation, and we're always hoping for negotiations that might solve those problems. Since it's a symptom I think that has to be dealt with in the same way. Negotiations -- this is rather interesting that we say don't negotiate with the terrorism. Whether we can reach accommodation with them may be a problem, but this is rather unique to say that we don't negotiate with them. Most people who are involved in terrorism say, you know, talk, negotiate. Maybe a solution can be reached whereby your people that are being held hostage, being held prisoner, are going to be freed, but you won't know that unless you talk. You may be turned down. These other options may be the things that have to take place, but it seems to me that to begin with there should be an attempt to establish communications with them. Part of the problems in the world are when people stop talking. Neither terror nor silence is the way to solve any problem.

MacNEIL: You don't mean don't talk to them; you mean don't bargain with them and give in to their demands. Is that what you mean?

Mr. PODHORETZ: I think they have to be threatened with dire consequences, and when you negotiate with them you concede, in effect, the legitimacy of terrorism as a political weapon or a political technique, and you, whether you like it or not, allow them into the realm of normal political discourse and bargaining, which is exactly what they want, and which is exactly what they should not get, not only because they are pursuing objectives with which you disagree, but because they are using criminal means, means that the entire international community ought to be united in declaring to be criminal.

MacNEIL: So you would treat Shiite Muslim plane hijackers the same as Palestinian ship hijackers, just as terrorists, and not look further at what their individual motives may be?

Mr. PODHORETZ: I don't see any distinction between them. What their motives may be is a question that can be discussed in other contexts. But what we have to understand is that a crime has been committed, an act of aggression has been perpetrated, and the responsible parties are those who are committing the crime, the terrorists, and the effort to shift that responsibility to other parties is morally irresponsible and an incentive, encouragement and reward to terrorism.

MacNEIL: Mr. Levin?

Mr. LEVIN: I'd like to interject -- respond to something that Mr. Podhoretz said, "We have to threaten them with dire consequences." Threats may be necessary, but I think that we have to consider the kind of threat that's being made. First of all, it's a little difficult to stand tall in the saddle if the horse you're sitting on or trying to stand tall in the saddle on is standing on quicksand. The kind of threats I think can have a bearing on this. The kind of threats that the administration made during the hijacking crisis a couple of times almost served to upset the resolution. These were the kind of threats that said, "If you don't let our people go, we're going to to do this." That was a threat, that we will do this to you unless you let them go. And there's a big difference between that kind of threat and the threats that the administration during the Iranian crisis made, which was, "If you do this to the hostages -- if you put them on trial, if you execute them -- we will do that." So I think the quality of the threat is rather important.

MacNEIL: Mr. Podhoretz?

Mr. PODHORETZ: The problem with the United States, both in the Iranian situation and the TWA hostage crisis, is not that we threatened but that we never made good on the threats. They were seen to be empty. In the aftermath of the TWA hijacking, we haven't even resorted to the kind of legal means that we said we would adopt in extraditing the terrorists. We know who they are, and we've done nothing about that, for other reasons. We have in effect done nothing. The terrorists have gone scot-free, and I believe that terrorists all over the world now understand that the probability of any action being taken against them is very, very slight, and therefore they have very little to lose in staging operations of this kind.

MacNEIL: Do you believe that, Jeremy Levin?

Mr. LEVIN: I think the problem is that, yeah, the terrorists do perceive that our threats are empty, and that's why I said earlier we've got to be very careful the kind of threats that we do make, and I think that speaks to the point that I was raising earlier. If our threats are empty, then instead of brandishing swords that we're not going to be able to wield, then maybe we better find another way, and that's to start talking. And not only talk on this problem, on the specific problem of terrorism, but begin to get to the roots on the broad level, which is the causes of the terrorism themselves. And whenever these crises arise, we seem to focus entirely on terrorism and get diverted from the basic underlying causes of the terrorism, which are political in nature, and they have to do with the perceptions of what we are doing and what we are not doing in the Middle East from these people's point of view. Now, whether the perception is appropriate or correct or not is not important here. They are perceptions, and they've got to be dealt with, and I'm not sure you can deal with them by threatening to give them a bloody nose.

Mr. PODHORETZ: But in this case you have the Palestinian faction -- which may or may not be under the control of Arafat, I'm not convinced on that point yet -- attacking an Italian ship when, as we've already heard, the Italians have been, if anything, solicitous to a fault so far as the Palestinian cause is concerned. It reminds me a little bit of radical attacks on the most liberal universities in the 1960s. Here you have the case of a friendly nation being aggressed against, which I think simply refutes the notion that the terrorism is caused by frustration against resistance or hostility.

MacNEIL: Well, let's widen this out. Jim?

LEHRER: Yes, Mr. Hart, do you agree with that, the fact that they attacked an Italian ship?

Mr. HART: First of all, I think I'd rather make an observation and a question to counter terrorism, as Mr. Podhoretz would like --

LEHRER: Wait a minute. I'll tell you what. Why don't you answer my question, then we'll get to yours. Okay?

Mr. HART: Give me your question again.

LEHRER: All right. First of all, I'll tell you what. Let's go back to the Israeli point that Mr. Podhoretz says that it's absurd to blame Israel, as you did, for the actions which you conceded were Palestinian --

Mr. HART: But that's patently untrue. He said I blamed Israel. I didn't say anything of the kind. It's ridiculous. I can't be responsible for the way he's misquoting me. I never said anything like that.

LEHRER: Mr. Podhoretz?

Mr. PODHORETZ: Well, I'm glad to hear that I misunderstood, but I think if you read a transcript of these remarks Mr. Hart made you would see that he did in fact blame Israel.

Mr. LUTTWAK: The actual point that I heard made was that Arafat is innocent and that he continues to be blamed for these things. On that point, without entering into the whole politics of it, I noticed that all these so-called tiny splinter groups that represent nobody seem to have lots of money, they have equipment, they have means. They have documents which are very hard to get. And I believe the pattern here is that there is a PLO as a kind of combined corporation, which issues false passports or authentic passports from friendly countries, provides money, provides equipment, provides training, and then these operations go, sometimes coordinated, sometimes not. If I remember in recent news reports, Arafat claimed credit for a number of terrorist acts within Israel just in the last few weeks. He then sometimes chooses not to take credit, and it depends on the outcome. Sometimes we hear of brand-new, never-before-heard-of organizations are suddenly presented to us. You remember Black September came into being at one point. It later turned out that Black September was a cover name for Arafat's intelligence section or some other part of the outfit. So I really think that the whole issue of the responsibility or otherwise of an individual is not important, and what we're dealing with here is a professional organization which has many different groups, some poorly coordinated, which engage in violence. And the only question is, do you say, because you have a gun I'm going to talk to you and I'm going to make concessions to you, or do you say these are people that have to be rubbed off the face of the earth?

Mr. HART: Please, can I make my point? Look, in pursuit of the terrorists, however you've described them, Israel, for example, bashed into the Lebanon in 1982 and destroyed a city and probably the whole moral standing of Judaism, many Jews feel, by so doing it. They bombed Tunis to kill Arafat. Now, where does the logic -- you didn't achieve anything, Israel didn't achieve anything. Where does the logic take us? Do we bomb Amman next week? Do we bomb Saudi Arabia the following week? Do we bomb Arafat if he comes to speak in the United Nations? Where does this logic take us?

Mr. PODHORETZ: The logic takes us to retaliation against responsible parties for acts of terrorism, which is the only method by which terrorism can be effectively answered. This notion that Judaism was discredited -- again I have to protest this is an offensive thing to say. By Israel's incursion or invasion of Lebanon. The fact is that the pursuit -- hot pursuit of terrorism is not only legal but, I believe, to be morally necessary --

Mr. HART: What does it achieve? What have you achieved so far?

Mr. PODHORETZ: What it achieves is the sense, the fulfillment of a sense of justice in the punishment of criminal acts. That's to begin with. It also acts to discourage further acts of terrorism.

Mr. HART: But it patently doesn't because we're seeing more and more terrorism. That's nonsense.

Mr. LEVIN: It doesn't encourage the solving of the basic political problems. [crosstalk]

LEHRER: It's going to be very crucial, gentlemen, that we all talk one at a time. Mr. Hart, are you saying do not retaliate against the Palestinians and negotiate with these people on the ship? Let's talk about the ship, okay? Okay? Let's talk about the ship. The guys on the ship, shall we negotiate?

Mr. HART: We don't know -- it's previously been said, we don't know how strong they are, we don't know what the possibilities for negotiations are. At some stage a judgment has to be made about how serious they are, whether they are going to kill, whether they can kill. So many factors have to be taken into account.

Mr. LUTTWAK: If I may introduce a technical note here, the Italian approach to terrorism in fact has been to completely disregard what the purported motives of the various terrorists they've had to deal with are. And to treat it purely as a criminal act. Secondly, the Italian approach has been based on the recognition that there are no clean military operations, that there will be problems, there will be mistakes, there'll be a mess, people will get killed. And instead they have felt that as a matter of self-respect, not cost-effectiveness, not calculating what's best for me in the short run, but just a matter of national self-respect to deal with terrorism; indeed, as the British have dealt with the IRA. What has availed to the British the fact that they have resisted the IRA for some 60 years? But I believe successive British governments, while perhaps ready to tell other countries to negotiate with their own terrorists have themselves treated this as a matter of self-respect. So have the Italians. And I believe that they're going to use force and they're going to manifest their sovereign indifference as to purported motives because they have learned domestically that when a man has a gun in his hand, that does not give him the right for political dialogue.

LEHRER: Does that give you trouble, Mr. Levin?

Mr. LEVIN: Well, it gives me trouble if that's absolutely inflexible.

Mr. LUTTWAK: Absolutely inflexible. Even when the prime minister -- terrorists seized the Italian prime minister, Aldo Moro, the Italian government flatly refused to communicate with them or to respond to terrorist communications. The only thing they promised the terrorists is that they would be caught and, if not killed on the spot, would then spend the rest of their existence on this earth in prison. That was the only communication they were willing to make, and I believe they'll act the same way with these people.

LEHRER: Mr. Hart, and if you'll please try to answer my question this time, because you are the expert on the Palestinians. If the Italians in fact do what Mr. Luttwak says they may do, what effect do you think that would have on the terrorist movement within the Palestinian movement?

Mr. HART: I don't suppose it will have any effect because the real problem, as my friend on my left says, is we are dealing with a political issue fundamentally at root cause, and it is that frustration that is driving the terrorism. It's irrelevant, quite frankly.

LEHRER: So it wouldn't matter what --

Mr. HART: Until you deal with the politics, it's irrelevant.

Mr. LUTTWAK: May I ask Mr. Hart whether, as a British citizen, I believe, whether he believes that the British government should negotiate with the IRA and make all the concessions --

LEHRER: Oh, come on, gentlemen. There's no way we're going to talk about the IRA tonight.

Mr. LUTTWAK: No, what I mean is, if this is the solution, if this is -- to me this is a military problem that calls for military response.

LEHRER: Mr. Podhoretz, do you disagree with Mr. Hart's point that there are always political reasons behind an act of terrorism like this and that until you resolve those problems you'll never stop terrorism?

Mr. PODHORETZ: Well, that's like saying until you bring the millenium you won't wipe out evil. There are always root causes for every act of violence, whether domestic or international, but one has to deal with criminal behavior as one finds it, and one cannot wait upon the solution of ultimate questions.

LEHRER: Can you disagree with that, Mr. Hart, that criminal behavior, you know, if somebody puts a gun to somebody, should not be dealt with as a criminal, they should be dealt with as a political act?

Mr. HART: I think it's insane simply to go on shutting your eyes to the fact that there is a political problem to be solved. The terrorist acts when nobody allows him to solve the problem politically.

LEHRER: Mr. Levin?

Mr. LEVIN: This has been a basic problem, apparently, while I was gone and certainly, to my astonishment, when I came back, that the problems of the six hostages still left, the hijacking hostages, and these hostages, the issue has always gotten focused in on terrorism and not the underlying cause, the political causes. It boggled my mind when I came back and found out that the context in which we were taken captive and the other people were taken captive was not debated and discussed, and I'm glad that it is finally starting.

LEHRER: It was here. It was on the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour.

Mr. PODHORETZ: Endlessly.

LEHRER: Gentlemen --

Mr. LEVIN: Well, then good. I'm glad to be part of it finally.

LEHRER: With that plug, we'll leave it here. Mr. Podhoretz in New York, gentlemen here in Washington, thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, an essay from Missouri on the bitter harvest facing farmers and a report from the Caucasus Mountains on a joint American-Soviet climbing expedition. Bitter Harvest

LEHRER: The debate in the House of Representatives over the farm bill is over, for now at least. Late this afternoon the House approved legislation that, for the most part, continues existing crop support programs. Meanwhile, out near Kirksville, Missouri, it's harvest time, hereby chronicled by our regular essayist from the Midwest, Jim Fisher, columnist for the Kansas City Times.

JIM FISHER [voice-over]: Here in the Farm Belt as the days shorten it's time to reap, to gather in, to send men and machines into these brimming fields for the nut-brown soybeans and parchment-colored corn, to harvest the dreams of spring, a universal rite. And this year, for many, a bitter chore because this crop, a crop now cascading into grain bins and elevators, a crop farmers here in northeast Missouri say is the best in five years, maybe the best ever, spells disaster, at least for some. There is too much; the crop is too big. Prices, the law of supply and demand, have tumbled -- the lowest in a decade. And for those on the financial edge, this may be the last harvest. Bill Shoup is in bankruptcy, even though he's harvesting a bumper crop.

BILL SHOUP, farmer: We're still kind of an old-fashioned breed out here. We kind of like to go to church on Sunday and our word is kind of a bond. And it doesn't go down well to have obligations and not be able to meet them.

FISHER [voice-over]: Shoup and his wife, Donna, run a financial counseling service here in Memphis for farmers, private, not state or federal or local. They look at farmers' balance sheets, tell the farmers their options, what loans they might have a chance at, and, hardest of all, they tell farmers when the figures don't match, when there's no choice but to go out of business. Cheryl Parsons is a counselor. She says the situation is getting so bad that farmers are not only taking bankruptcy, but some are also taking their lives.

CHERYL PARSONS, nancial counselor: Thirty percent of the farm suicides -- or accidents are probably actually farm suicides. It's a way that they can live with -- the family can live with that stigma of "my spouse or my father committed suicide."

FISHER [voice-over]: But there is something else here, something unseen, a moral wrestling match farmers on the edge or almost there must wage in their consciences. The word here is ethics. If what they get for this year's crop is short of what they owe, what do they do? Plead for another year, maybe only to postpone the inevitable if drought or floods come again? Or beg, anathema to a farmer? Or do they quit?

[on camera] If you really want to know how bad things are out on the farm, consider the check the farmer gets for the grain he sells. It used to be such checks were just written to the farmer, John Doe, for instance. Now it seems the trust is gone. Now those checks are written not only to the farmer but to his banker and to his suppliers -- the seed dealer, the fertilizer guy, even the man who brings the diesel fuel in the tank wagon. Everybody, it seems now, is in line for what in most cases won't be enough money.

[voice-over] Yet farmers here, faced with problems a mob loan shark couldn't solve, are fighting to stay, to save a way of life, but most of all to do the right thing, not just for themselves but for the people they owe, in many cases their neighbors. And that's the tragedy of what's happening. Look at the faces of the men and women who gather before dawn at Mom's Place, and you'll see people here as good as we've got -- honest, God-fearing, hard-working. And the cost isn't theirs alone. It's a rending of the social and emotional fabric of a part of our country we all want to stay the same.

Hard work and a good crop, a maxim of the American Dream, a phrase that almost seems to be genetically fused in the American makeup. Hard work and a good crop. Both came together here in Missouri this fall of 1985; for some has also come the taste of ashes. Summit Trek

MacNEIL: This summer, 10 young Americans spent a month in the Soviet Union exploring the rugged Caucasus Mountains with a group of Soviet students. This backpacking adventure was sponsored by the U.S.-USSR youth exchange program based in San Francisco. It'll be the subject of an upcoming television documentary, "The Challenge of the Caucasus." Independent producer Lynne Joiner accompanied the expedition to the snowy summit of Mount Elbrus and sent us this report.

LYNNE JOINER [voice-over]: Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains of the Soviet Union, Europe's highest peak. In the pre-dawn hours of August 3rd, a special group of climbers set off to reach its summit. It was the first time a group of young Soviets and Americans had ever attempted a joint climb to the nearly 19,000-foot peak.

Ten climbers had already lost their lives on the mountain earlier in the year but, despite the danger, the U.S. and Russian trekkers took on the challenge. Their adventure together actually began one month earlier at a base camp hotel. The Americans were greeted warmly and somewhat nervously when they first arrived and met the students from Moscow who would be their companions.

CYNTHIA LAZAROFF, U.S. trek leader: I said that I understand someone would speak English, and he said -- and everybody pointed to him and he said, "Very little, very badly."

JOINER [voice-over]: Cynthia Lazaroff is a 28-year-old, Princeton-trained Soviet specialist who runs youth exchanges with the Soviet Union. She first got the idea for this project five years ago.

Ms. LAZAROFF: Trying to organize something on this scale inside the Soviet Union is not easy, and from the very beginning people told me it's impossible. The dream is for as many Americans and as many Soviets as possible to find ways to cooperate and to move forward to better relations between the two countries. Sharing, surviving, living together in the wilderness is a very powerful demonstration of our ability to cooperate.

JOINER [voice-over]: The 10 Americans were chosen by Lazaroff not only for their physical ability but also for their desire to learn first-hand about the Soviet Union and its people. The Russian trekkers were selected by the director of the Soviet Sports Committee's international mountaineering camps. Their first task together was to try to overcome the language barrier.

The communications gap sometimes created some very real problems. Beth Ewing of Maryland discovered what could happen at the end of a long day's hike when the backpacks are finally set down and the tents are set up.

BETH EWING, U.S. trekker: We were all so exhausted. There was nothing more we wanted to do than just get our sort of setting-up-camp chores out of the way. And, you know, everybody joined in to help and all the poles, the smalls were going in the wrong slots, you know, you'd stick the end in and go, "Okay, pull." They don't understand "pull." It was so frustrating. We all felt like killing each other. It was terrible.

JOINER [voice-over]: Language wasn't the only barrier to be overcome. Campsite cooking also almost turned into an international incident. The trekkers learned there are some definite differences in Soviet and American tastes.

JAY WINTHROP, U.S. trekker: This morning there was so much sugar and so much milk in the hot cereal that many of the Americans couldn't eat it.

And I'd like to have it so that there'd only be, again, a medium amount of sugar. [translator interprets]

Ms. LAZAROFF: They forgot this morning. Basically they just forgot, and they're very, very sorry. And they just didn't remember. And in the future --

JOINER [voice-over]: After a few days together the trekkers were ready for their first real mountaineering test. Climbing with ice axes while carring heavy, 30-to-40-pound packs made them soon realize there was more to the challenge of the Caucasus than just Mount Elbrus. That became very clear on a trip to a remote region called Svanetia.

Ms. LAZAROFF: Getting over the Betcho Pass on the first day of the trek to Svanetia I think intimidated a lot of people. It was very cold and very windy and very snowy, and very scary. And I know that tears were freezing on my face. It was really rough.

JOINER [voice-over]: It was so rough struggling to the 11,500-foot summit of the Betcho Pass that doubts about climbing the much higher Mount Elbrus went with every footstep. It took six grueling hours for the trekkers to help each other push to the top of the pass. It would be another five difficult hours to reach a campsite far below in the land of Svanetia.

Although the region was as foreign to the kid from Moscow as the kid from California, Svanetia was well known to the ancient Greeks. Alexander the Great even marched his men through here. The distinctive medieval defense towers literally made every man's home his castle-fortress in times of siege. Now they're merely one of the sights to be seen.

U.S. TREKKER: It was like out of a book. I've never seen or heard anything like it before. And when they asked us to dance with them, that was incredible. I loved it. It was fun. It made my day.

U.S. trekker: I was kind of hesitating and then they just said, "Come on, let's dance." So I went out there and danced. That was fun, though. I got a really warm feeling from just being there because everybody was really happy and the whole spirit of the dancing and just being together.

JOINER [voice-over]: At the end of the trekkers' day in Svanetia came a surprise invitation to a pre-wedding feast for the daughter of one of the village singers.

U.S. TREKKER: Being invited was very special. I felt it really touched me. I've never been to a wedding where you eat first and you celebrate first and they guys have cha-cha drinking contests.

JOINER [voice-over]: Within a few days, the trekkers were back at their base camp hotel preparing for their ascent of Mount Elbrus. It was then they learned yet another climber, the 10th of the season, had just been killed on the mountain. As the Americans readied their gear for their own climb, they faced their fears about their physical safety and their anxieties about really trusting the Russians who would be their guides.

JAY WINTHROP, U.S. trekker: You'll find that they've got some very concrete beliefs that clash with our own, and that will in itself sort of make you smell the coffee about how -- in other words, it's not just sort of 10 American kids and 10 Soviet kids having a good time camping together. It's a lot more complicated than that.

Ms. LAZAROFF: The Soviets have approached us and talked about the need for people to really think as a group, and think in terms of the possibility of some people making it and not necessarily everybody making it. We can all hold the vision that we'll make it, and we all, I think, really you know, want to hold that vision and think positively. But we all have to understand that the likelihood, based on probability and statistics of all of our making it is very -- is not very -- it's not very likely that we're all going to make it.

TROY SHORTELL, U.S. trekker: Yeah, I think that we have to go with what people who have done it a million times before say, you know, what we can do.

TAYLOR SMITH, U.S. trekker: Somebody mentioned to me, a friend of our family's, before I came that a quote that, you know, the top of a mountain is no place for nationalism. And I really expected us to sit here at a point of the trip at this time, and say, "I just want to beat the Soviets." Or, you know, "If the Soviets get there, I want to be there." And I think that I was feeling that at first, and I think that that's a legitimate, you know, patriotic or nationalistic feeling. And I think it's neat that we are taking a flag, but I also think it's neat that we're going as a group of Americans and as a group of Soviets, but as a group of people.

JOINER [voice-over]: Finally, the Soviet and American trekkers were on the mountain they had come to climb. Group leader Cynthia Lazaroff now had to worry about her trekkers' safety and whether altitude sickness would turn her dream into a nightmare.

Ms. LAZAROFF: Well, it will be obvious to you, probably, and to the guides. They will be watching all of us very carefully because our lives are in their hands.

JOINER [voice-over]: The Soviet and American trekkers and their guides spent two days at a climber's refuge at 14,000 feet getting used to the altitude before their pre-dawn departure. The group was split into two parties to try to assure that at least the fittest and fastest would reach the top. Despite the wind, the weather was good and unusually clear. The trekkers moved confidently up the mountain toward the 18,841-foot summit, but the rising sun offered no warmth.

Mr. SMITH: Oh, man! It feels about 30 degrees colder than it really is, I think. My face is frozen.

JOINER: We're about 2,500 feet below the summit, and the wind is blowing at about 25 miles an hour. The wind chill factor is taking its toll. We know at least one of the trekkers has had to turn back already at this point.

[voice-over] One young woman who refused to turn back is Karen Bortolazzo. Despite a fever and exhaustion, she persevered with the help of Russian guide Viktor Goryach.

KAREN BORTOLAZZO, U.S. trekker: Every time I would try to sit down he'd tell me to get up. I'd say nyet, and he'd make me get up and start hiking again and he'd say, "Down?" and I'd say, "Nyet. Up!" And so he'd make me get up and start hiking again, and knowing that the rest of the trekkers were at the top made me keep going.

JOINER [voice-over]: It took the lead group of trekkers nearly five hours to reach the 18,500-foot point known as The Saddle. They were all weary. Just opening a water bottle took tremendous effort. But they remained determined, even though they knew the last few hundred feet would be their hardest.

Mr. SMITH: I'm feeling exhausted and exhilarated. I just wish we could all be there together, but, you know, the fact that there is a group of Americans and a group of Soviets that are making it to the highest peak in Europe together, that's the most important thing, and that's beautiful.

JOINER [voice-over]: It took another hour before the first group made it to the summit. Seventeen-year-old Troy Shortell of California carried an American flag that had been passed down from his grandfather.

Mr. SHORTELL: When I went up to that summit and I stuck the ice ax in the ground and I was there with one of the other Soviet kids, and he did the same with the Soviet flag, it all, you know -- the fog was cleared. It was the meaning of the trip. It really was. We've got to respect each other, what we stand for, and that we can live on this earth, and that we've really got to and we've got to do it soon. I've got high hopes right now, I'll tell you, I've got real high hopes.

IRINA SYVOVA, Russian trekker: We climbed this mountain together, it's so important for all of us.

JOINER [voice-over]: For Cynthia Lazaroff who'd led the group to Elbrus, reaching the summit was only a beginning. She plans to bring more Americans next year. She also hopes some day similar expeditions will climb mountains of America.

MacNEIL: That report was by Lynne Joiner, who told us that all of the trekkers returned safely.

LEHRER: Again, the major stories of ths day. The hijacked Italian cruise ship remains off the coast of Cyprus. There are still authoritative but unofficial reports that two Americans among the more than 400 hostages aboard have been killed. The Palestinian hijackers have threatened to kill more passengers or blow up the ship if 50 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are not released. More than 60 persons are dead in a mudslide tragedy in Puerto Rico, and the House of Representatives has ended its debate on the farm bill by a 282-to-141 vote. The House approved legislation that continues most existing crop support programs. Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Jim. That's our NewsHour tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.