Hostage: Fellow Captive Steen Dying

BEIRUT, Lebanon--American hostage Jesse Turner said on a videotape yesterday that fellow American captive Alann Steen is dying, and he urged the United States and Israel to accept the terms for Steen's release.

Their kidnappers, who said Monday that Steen was near death, offered to trade him for 100 Arab prisoners held in Israel and demanded that the United States persuade the Israelis to agree. Both governments have refused to accept the deal.

"You all know that our fellow Alann Steen is dying," Turner said in a five-minute videotape delivered to the offices of the leftist daily newspaper As-Safir in Moslem West Beirut.

"The doctor says in his report that: 'After checking the patient Alann Steen I found out that he had a crisis in his blood pressure....The symptoms he had were headache, hemiparicia, anxiety and difficulty in breathing.'''

It was not clear what he meant by hemiparicia. A similar-sounding condition, hemiparesis, is defined in Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary as "muscular weakness affecting one side of the body."

There was no indication whether this was the illness in question.

A typewritten English text of Turner's statement accompanied the videotape.

Steen and Turner's captors, who call themselves Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, said Monday that Steen might die within 10 days and promised to make his condition clear in a videotape by Thursday.

Turner said a videotape of Steen "will be taped soon. If he is in good condition Alann will be talking."

"We urge our wives and families to go to America and Israel and press there because the keys of our issue are there," he said. "Moving in Lebanon is useless. You must press on America for the sake of Alann Steen."

"We ask the American people and our families to press on our administration to make sure that we will be released alive," the tape continued.

Turner was shown from the waist up, bearded and wearing a white T-shirt. His voice was steady and he appeared to be in good health.

Steen, Turner and two other teachers--Robert Polhill, 53, of New York City, and Mithileshwar Singh, 60, an Indian who is a legal resident alien of the United States--were abducted January 24 from the Beirut: University College campus in west Beirut. Steen, 47, is from Boston, and Turner, 39, from Boise, Idaho.

Another group of kidnappers, the pro-Iranian Revolutionary Justice Organization, has threatened to kill French hostage Jean-Louis Normandin, 35, unless France clarifies its policy on terrorism and arms shipments to Iraq. Iran and Iraq have been at war since September 1980.

The independent Beirut newspaper An-Nahar yesterday quoted Paul Blanc, the new French ambassador, as saying: "Although we care for the hostages and think daily about contacts and means we could resort to in order to secure their safe release, we refuse to be slaves to the kidnappers to which many of our compatriots fell victim."

Twenty-four foreigners, including eight Americans and six Frenchmen, are missing in Lebanon and believed held by Moslem extremists.

In other Lebanon developments, six people were reported killed in a new outburst of fighting between Shiite Moslem militiamen and Palestinian guerrillas yesterday around a Beirut refugee camp.

The Shiite-Palestinian fighting began as about 500 Palestinian women were returning to the Bourj el-Barajneh shantytown from a protest at which they demanded an end to the siege of refugee campus by end to the siege of refugee campus by gunmen of the Shiite militia Amal.