The New York Times
SHIP CARRYING 400 SEIZED; HIJACKERS DEMAND RELEASE OF 50 PALESTINIANS IN ISRAEL
Americans on Trip
Armed Men Threaten to Blow Up Italian Liner -- Arafat Denies Role
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
Special to The New York Times

ROME, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 1985-- Heavily armed men hijacked an Italian cruise ship with more than 400 people aboard in the Mediterranean on Monday and demanded the release of 50 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.

The leader of the hijackers, reportedly members of a militant Palestinian faction, was said to have warned that the first hostages to be killed would be Americans.

It was unclear how many Americans were still on the ship. A spokesman for the cruise line said from California on Monday night that 62 Americans had been registered for the cruise. An Italian Foreign Ministry report said 72 Americans were listed as passengers.

Many Got Off the Ship

The liner, the Achille Lauro, was bound from Alexandria, Egypt, to Port Said, near the Suez Canal, when she was hijacked. She was reported early today to be in international waters about 15 miles off Port Said.

An Italian Foreign Ministry spokesman said that before the hijacking many of the 680 passengers had left the ship in Alexandria for a day of sightseeing. He said they were on their way by bus to Cairo. Of those, the largest number, about 300, were West Germans.

The ship then sailed for Port Said with about 350 crew members and the passengers who chose to remain on board. There, she was to have picked up the sightseers. The Italian Foreign Ministry said 340 crew members and 70 to 80 passengers were still on board.

The hijackers were quoted as saying they would blow up the ship if a rescue mission was undertaken. According to unconfirmed reports from Israeli radio monitors, the hijackers said they would begin killing the hostages unless their demands were broadcast on Egyptian radio and televison.

Number of Hijackers Not Known

It was not known how many hijackers had seized the vessel.

The hijackers' leader said in a ship-to-shore telephone call to port officials in Port Said that the hijackers were members of the Palestine Liberation Front, a dissident faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, The Associated Press reported. [In a telephone interview from Algiers, a senior aide to the P.L.O. leader, Yasir Arafat, said that members of his P.L.O. faction were not involved and that the gunmen belonged to a new, small guerrilla band composed of residents of the Sabra and Shatila refugee districts of Beirut.] State Department officials said they were uncertain how many Americans were aboard the ship when she was hijacked. Information provided by the ship's owners indicated that there were passengers of 22 or 23 nationalities on the cruise, but that none were Israelis, the State Department said.

There were unconfirmed reports on the state-run Italian television that 28 Americans were on board the ship when she was hijacked.

''The only people they're holding are the crew members and a few stragglers who didn't take the shore excursion,'' said Frank M. Gari, the West Coast general manager for the Chandris Company, the American agent for the ship's owners, said in Los Angeles. ''I have no idea how many Americans are on board. There's no doubt that most of those on the boat are Italian.'' [Harriet Hauser of Hollywood, Fla., who left the ship in Alexandria, said on the ABC News program ''Nightline'' that Americans were still on board, The Associated Press reported. ''I have two friends that stayed on ship because they had been here before,'' she said. Another passenger, Matthew Polito of New Jersey, also said he knew of Americans still aboard, the A.P. reported.] The Italian Foreign Ministry said that it had been in touch with Mr. Arafat, at his headquarters in Tunis and that he ''totally disassociated himself'' from the hijacking.

P.L.O. officials in Rome and in Egypt said the same thing, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said. But he said the Italian Government assumed that the hijackers were Palestinians.

Italian Foreign Ministry officials said Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti had contacted his Egyptian counterpart and the P.L.O. The officials said Mr. Andreotti sought assurances from Mr. Arafat about the safety of those aboard.

Although the hijackers were reported to have called for the release of 50 prisoners, there are hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails for a variety of crimes.

Italian news agencies, citing Israeli Government sources, said most of the Palestinians held in Israeli jails whose release was being sought may have been among those recently captured by the Israeli Navy. The Palestinians were apparently seeking to enter Lebanon on small boats from Cyprus.

In recent months, Israeli boats have stopped or sunk three boatloads of Palestinians seeking to enter Israel or Lebanon by sea.

Ship Was to Stop in Israel

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that Israeli officials were in contact with the Italian Embassy in Tel Aviv and that the Israeli Ambassador to Italy had talked with the Foreign Minister, Mr. Andreotti. They said the ship had been scheduled to call at the southern Israeli port of Ashdod.

Early today, Italy's Prime Minister, Bettino Craxi, called an emergency meeting with Mr. Andreotti and Defense Minister Giovanni Spadolini.

Mr. Spadolini put Italy's armed forces on a state of alert. But there was no indication that Italy would try to use force to free the hostages.

The Italian news agency ANSA reported that a port official in Port Said had been in radio contact with the ship's captain, Tristone Benni. Mr. Benni told the Egyptian port officials that the hijackers had locked the crew members and passengers in their cabins.

No one had been harmed, the captain reportedly said, but the head of the hijackers, who he said was named either Oman or Omar, said his group would kill people on the ship unless 50 Palestinians held in Israel were released. He also reportedly said the P.L.O. would blow up the ship if anyone tried to approach it.

According to the Egyptian authorities, a Palestinian named Samir al-Qantari headed the list of the Palestinian prisoners whose release was demanded. He is thought to be an imprisoned survivor of a Palestinian raid on the northern Israeli resort city of Nahariya in 1979 in which an Israeli man and his daughter were killed.

Unclear Why Ship Was Chosen

It was not clear why an Italian vessel had been hijacked. Italy's foreign policy has been generally favorable to Palestinian aspirations for some form of autonomy, while also supporting Israel's right to exist.

Nevertheless, in recent years Italy has been the scene of several terrorist incidents connected to the political turmoil in the Middle East. Last month, a Lebanese-born Palestinian was charged with throwing two grenades into a Rome cafe on the Via Veneto, wounding 38 people.

Eight days later, 14 people were wounded when a Palestinian teen-ager from a group opposed to the leadership of Mr. Arafat lobbed a bomb into a British Airways terminal in Rome.

In Washington, the State Department set up what it described as an ''informal working group'' Monday night to monitor the situation. The official said the working group included representatives from the Defense Department as well as the State Department.

A similar group was set up in June after a Trans World Airlines plane on an Athens-to-Rome flight was hijacked and eventually flown to Beirut, where 39 Americans were held hostage.

The Achille Lauro, built in 1946, accommodates 950 passengers and has two swimming pools, a gymnasium, a sauna, a beauty parlor and a discotheque. She is jointly owned by Greek and Italian shipping interests.

The 23,629-ton ship left Genoa on Thursday with stops scheduled in Naples; Syracuse, Sicily; Alexandria; Port Said; Limassol, Cyprus, and Rhodes, Greece. The liner left Alexandria at 10 A.M. Monday.

The report of the hijacking on Monday came a week after Israeli fighter jets attacked P.L.O. headquarters near Tunis, killing at least 73 people and wounding about 100 others.

Israel called the attack a retaliation for the killing a week earlier of three Israelis on a yacht in Cyprus by three Palestinian gunmen.

The three Palestinians, who were arrested in Cyprus, had demanded before killing the Israelis that the Israeli Government release members of P.L.O. Force 17, Mr. Arafat's personal bodyguard unit, who had been seized by Israel off the coast of Lebanon.