'No More Extensions'

An ultimatum for Bonn as kidnapers and skyjackers ally

Most of the passengers aboard Lufthansa Flight 181 were vacationers homeward bound for Frankfurt from the balmy Spanish playground of Majorca. Shortly after the Boeing 737 took off from Palma, two Arabic-speaking men and two women pulled out pistols and grenades and ordered the pilot to change course. So began a terrifying odyssey for the 82 other passengers and the five-man crew. For 2 1/2 days, they were held in the Persian Gulf sheikdom of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Early this week, they were flown to Aden, South Yemen, after being refused permission to land in Oman. They faced the possibility of death if the skyjackers' demands were not met. Their fate, moreover, was perilously linked with that of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the West German industrialist kidnaped in early September and held captive by West German terrorists.

After Flight 181 was skyjacked, Schleyer's captors--who call themselves the Commando Siegfried Hausner unit of the Red Army Faction--sent one ultimatum to the West German government and a second to the Paris mass-circulation daily France-Soir. In the messages, the group boasted of its ties to the skyjackers and set out its demands. Among them: the release from West German prisons of eleven convicted urban guerrillas (including Andreas Baader, co-founder of the notorious Baader-Meinhof gang); the freeing of two Palestinian guerrillas from Turkish jails; the transporting of the prisoners to Viet Nam, Somalia or South Yemen; and the payment of $15 million in ransom as well as $43,000 for each of the eleven guerrillas.

If these demands were not met, read the statement received by Bonn, "Hanns-Martin Schleyer will be shot. There will be no more extensions." In the ultimatum to the Paris daily, the terrorists warned West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt: "Any attempt on your part to delay or deceive us will mean immediate execution of Hanns-Martin Schleyer and all the passengers and crew of the plane."

The skyjacked jetliner reached Dubai on Friday after hopscotching from Rome to Cyprus and to Bahrain--picking up fuel along the way. Bonn implored Italian authorities to find some excuse to delay the airliner at Rome; the Italians, concerned for the passengers' safety, did not comply. At Dubai, the Defense Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Muhammad bin Rashid al-Maktum, tried unsuccessfully to negotiate the release of women and children aboard. Among them were eleven West German beauty queens who had won free vacations in Majorca.

The skyjackers were unusually secretive about their identities. In a brief conversation with an agent of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Cyprus (who said he was trying to persuade the terrorists to surrender), one of the skyjackers called himself Harda Mahmoud. He claimed to be a survivor of the Tal Zaa-tar Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, which had been overrun by Christian forces during the Lebanese civil war. The other male terrorist identified himself as Walter Mohammed. The skyjackers may be members of Min Beirut, a previously unknown Beirut-based guerrilla group that last week claimed responsibility for the skyjacking. Proclaiming Min Beirut's solidarity with the Red Army Faction, a message from the organization said that the purpose of the incident was "to secure the release of our comrades in prisons of the imperialist-reactionary-Zionist alliance."

By demanding freedom for the same prisoners whose release was being sought by Schleyer's abductors, the skyjackers have--in the words of a German official--"enormously complicated an already difficult situation." In the six weeks since the seizing of the 62-year-old industrialist, West German authorities have been deftly buying time in hopes that they could find a way to obtain Schleyer's release without giving in to the kidnapers. One deadline after another has expired as Bonn kept negotiating with the kidnapers through Denis Payot, a Swiss human rights activist who is not a terrorist sympathizer. German officials even went through the motions of asking Algeria, Libya, South Yemen, Iraq, Viet Nam and North Korea not to grant asylum to any of the imprisoned terrorists. All of the countries went along with the Germans.

The attitude of Schleyer's kidnapers hardened in early October, shortly after Tokyo capitulated to terrorists who had skyjacked a Japan Air Lines jet to Bangladesh and demanded freedom for nine imprisoned "comrades" and $6 million in ransom. After the skyjacking last week, Schmidt began meeting around the clock with the Cabinet and two crisis groups that he had formed to handle the Schleyer kidnaping. As of early this week, his government was still refusing to buckle to the terrorists' demands. Although he has taken a hard line on terrorists, the Christian Democratic opposition has been accusing Schmidt of being too soft. Schmidt thus may feel he has to act especially tough this time and stand up to the skyjackers and Schleyer's abductors. Remarked one harried chancellery aide: "We are reaching the crunch."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.