Resolution
By 1991 radical Shia operatives imprisoned in Europe had been freed. Islamic Dawa party members convicted of terrorism in Kuwait had been freed by Iraqi Invasion. There was no need to pressure Western supporters of the Iraq because Iran-Iraq War was over. It was pretty well established that the four missing Iranians were no longer alive.
More importantly Iran was in need of foreign investment "to repair its economy and infrastructure after the destruction of the Iran-Iraq War, and Syria needed to "consolidation of its hegemony over Lebanon" and obtain to Western aid to compensate for the loss of Soviet support following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Syria was actively pressuring Hezbollah to stop the abductions and a February 1987 attack by Syrian troops in Beirut that killed 23 members of Hezbollah was in part an expression of Syrian irritation with the continued hostage-taking. Hezbollah had guarantees from Syria that despite the end of the Lebanese Civil War, it would be allowed to remain armed, while all other Lebanese militias would be disarmed, on the grounds that Hezbollah needed its weapons to fight Israeli occupation in the South.
This combination of factors created a setting whereby UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar and his personal envoy, Giandomenico Picco (served on the Board of Governmental Relations for the American Iranian Council), could negotiate "a comprehensive resolution to the hostage-crisis." Hezbollah by December 1991, Hezbollah had released the last hostage in return for Israel's release of imprisoned Shi'ites.
Read more about this topic: Lebanon Hostage Crisis
Famous quotes containing the word resolution:
“The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience ... not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.”
—Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)
“We have been here over forty years, a longer period than the children of Israel wandered through the wilderness, coming to this Capitol pleading for this recognition of the principle that the Government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. Mr. Chairman, we ask that you report our resolution favorably if you can but unfavorably if you must; that you report one way or the other, so that the Senate may have the chance to consider it.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“It is a part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate; to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)