BEIRUT, Lebanon -- The chief of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, said Thursday his group cannot secure the release of the last two Western hostages held in Lebanon.
Nasrallah said the Islamic fundamentalist Hezbollah, the group behind the kidnappings of most Westerners throughout the 1980s in Beirut, has no influence over the captors of the Germans, Thomas Kemptner and Henrich Struebig, taken hostage nearly three years ago.
'We have no means of exerting influence on the kidnappers, we cannot intervene, contrary to what others may imagine,' Nasrallah said in an interview with the London-based Al Hayat newspaper.
The kidnappers, members of the Iranian-backed Shiite Hamadi family, have repeatedly linked the freedom of their hostages to the release of the two Hamadi brothers, Mohammed Ali Hamadi and Abbas Hamadi, imprisoned in Germany on terrorism charges.
'The kidnapping party has clear demands. Let them (Germany) meet these demands and the issue will be solved,' Nasrallah was quoted by the Arab newspaper as saying.
Kemptner, 50, and Struebig, 30, were kidnapped in southern Lebanon on May 12, 1989.
The captors' leader is believed to be Abdel Hadi Hamadi, the Hamadis' eldest brother, who is a security official in Hezbollah.
Last week, Abdel Hadi Hamadi, in a rare interview with the Beirut weekly Ash Shiraa magazine, called for Germany to reduce the sentences of his two brothers in return for talks on freeing the German hostages.
Germany has said European Community aid to Lebanon would only get through if the hostage issue was resolved.
