Japanese Embassy staff still under threat of death

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33454, 8 February 1974, Page 1

Japanese Embassy staff still under threat of death

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) KUWAIT, February 7. The staff of the Japanese Embassy in Kuwait were still today under threat of death from Arab guerrillas armed with grenades and automatic weapons.

The guerrillas, who seized the Embassy yesterday, have said they will kill the Ambassador and his staff unless four other guerrillas, holding hostages on board a commandeered ferry in Singapore Harbour, are flown out to Kuwait.

Japan agreed to the guerrillas’ demands and sent a plane to Singapore today to pick up their colleagues, but Kuwait said it would refuse to let the plane land. The guerrillas are believed to number at least five. Security forces round the four-storey block in Kuwait are evidently being kept at a minimum. Helmeted troops and police with rifles are posted at 20-yard intervals along the blocked-off road. Several soldiers with sub-machine-guns pace up and down the building’s flat roof. The office block also houses the Kuwait Foreign Ministry and the headquarters of the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. Curtains were drawn across windows of the thirdfloor Japanese mission, where the gunmen hold their prisoners. Three releases The guerrillas have released three Arab girl secretaries; and a Pakistani worker managed to slip out of the building while food was being taken in. Police said that about 13 hostages were still being held. The Japanese Foreign Minister (Mr Masayoshi Ohira) told the Diet in Tokyo today that the Japanese Government was sounding out other countries to see if they would accept the Japanese Airlines plane and guerrillas. The Foreign Ministry said: “It is not clear why Kuwait is not giving us permission for the plane to land.” Foreign Ministry sources said that officials were studying the advisability of seeking to land the Japan Airlines plane in Kuwait without prior consent from the Kuwaiti Government and getting consent afterwards. Ferry waits The Foreign Ministry said that the Prime Minister (Mr Kakuei Tanaka) had cabled Kuwait’s ruler (Sheikh Sabah Al Salim Al Sabah) urging him to give permission to let the plane land in Kuwait. In Singapore, the hijacked ferry, the Laju, was today still in its old position in the harbour, about a mile and a half offshore. Contact is being made with the four men—believed to be two Japanese and two Arabs. The guerrillas seized the ferry and took three hostages last Thursday after making an unsuccessful raid on a nearby oil refinery. Negotiations for their safe conduct out of Singapore have so far been deadlocked.

Both groups have said they belong to the revolutionary Japanese Red Army and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A Japan Airlines jet, fuelled and ready to carry four terrorists and their hostages to the Middle East, waited at Singapore Airport today, according to a cable from Singapore. The plane arrived in Singapore from Tokyo early this morning. The Singapore Prime Minister (Lee Kuan Yew), the Japanese Ambassador (Mr (Tokichiro Uomoto) and other Government and Embassy officials, continued their marathon meetings to work out final details for transferring the terrorists and their hostages to the plane.

Singapore has guaranteed them safe conduct to the airport. Two crews The jet will carry two crews, three senior Govern-

ment officials and a Japan Airlines vice-president. A J.A.L. senior executive admitted that there were risks to the crew, but added: "There are always big risks j in this type of incident.” He , said that the pilot was “very ' senior, very experienced and very cool.” But the terrorists “will be masters of the plane once > they come into the plane,” he ■ said.