WASHINGTON -- President Bush Thursday welcomed home five former hostages held for years in captivity in Lebanon, saying they had endured 'hell on a human scale.'
Calling them 'special heros, Bush greeted the smiling, waving hostages who stood side by side on the steps in the Rose Garden along with U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar and special envoy Giandomenico Picco, who negotiated their release from the radical Iranian-backed Shiites.
Among those invited, who survived the long tortuous ordeal, were Terry Anderson, the last hostage to be freed, Alann Steen, Joseph Cicippio, Thomas Sutherland and Jesse Turner. All were released within the last two months.
'Let me simply say on behalf of our entire country, welcome home,' Bush said. 'We share your joy and thank God you are free.'
'All you brave and wonderful men have survived an act of unspeakable, uncivilized cruelty,' Bush said in an East Room ceremony later. 'Hostage taking is hell on a human scale ... no power on earth can give back to you the years you lost, and yet no one can take from you the strenth of the spirit that sustained you.'
De Cuellar, who was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bush in an East Room ceremony told reporters that he expected the remains of Lt. Col. William Higgins and William Buckley to be turned over to the United States in two days and was working on the release of two remaining German hostages. He called the hostages 'brave and wonderful men.'
The president also presented Picco with a presidential award for special service for his successful diplomacy in winning release of the hostages.
Asked for his thoughts on the joyful occasion, Bush said:
'My thoughts are of these men, my thoughts of their families, my thoughts of the joy the nation feels at this time and others who preceeded them. I think we have a lot to be grateful for here in America. It's a wonderful, wonderful occasion at the White House.
'I feel pretty good and for good reason,' said Anderson.
In his remarks during the award ceremony, Bush said that hostage taking had failed, and that the U.S. was right not to negotiate with hostage takers.
'This policy was not without risk, sticking to it wasn't easy, but we learned that it works. I like to feel it brought you home,' the president told the ex-hostages.
Afterward, Bush escorted the former hostages and their families to the Pageant of Peace on the Ellipse behind the White House, where they stood with the president as he pressed the button to light the National Christmas Tree, after encountering some difficulties.
There was a comical moment when Bush, expecting to light the tree by pressing the button on a box, had to bang it and shake it before he finally got to illuminate the tree.
Each of the hostages was introduced on the pageant stage, and the president said, 'America's prayers were answered when they came home to us.'
'It is almost miraculous that we can celebrate with them in lighting the national Christmas tree,' Bush said, adding that they were 'guided by a light that cruelty could not extinguish.'
After attending the pageant and joining in the singing of Christmas carols, the hostages and their loved ones went back to the White House, which Bush called 'a winter wonderland,' for a party along with other guests.
Bush said he was not going to take down a yellow ribbon hanging on the door of the West Wing until all the Lebanon cases are closed, including the return of the two German hostages.
In Beirut, U.N. official Timur Goksel said the remains of Higgins, the head of a UN peacekeeping force in Southern Lebanon, who was killed while held hostage, will be sent back to his family soon.
Goksel, spokesman of the U.N. Interim Peacekeeping Force in southern Lebanon, said in an interview with the leading An-Nahar newspaper that de Cuellar has already notified relatives about the planned return of Higgins' body.
