An Iranian official said both presidential candidates have asked Iran for help securing the release of hostages held in Lebanon. Hussein Sheikholeslam, a deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, spoke at a news conference late Thursday in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, where he stopped en route to Kenya. He said Republican candidate George Bush and Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis made contact with Iran through third parties, including governments and individuals. Bush has denied this, and officials in Washington insist the United States has no direct or indirect contacts with the Iranians. Sheikholeslam said the identity of the intermediaries is ``a touchy question'' and that he did not want to get involved ``in the election games of the United States.'' But he said the contacts were not at the level of those conducted in 1986 that led to the Irangate scandal, in which arms were secretly sold to Iran. He did not elaborate. Sheikholeslam stressed that normalizing relations with the United States should be separated from the issue of the hostages held in Lebanon. Iranian-backed Shiite Moslem militants are believed to hold most of the 14 Westerners missing in Lebanon. Nine of the captives are American. The longest held is American Terry Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent of The Associated Press. He was kidnapped March 16, 1985. Sheikholeslam said Iran also was concerned about four Iranians who have been missing in Lebanon for six years. He said that while Iran was appealing for the release of its nationals, it was not necessarily linking their fate to that of the 14 Westerners. Former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani Sadr, who lives in exile in Paris, said recently that Richard Lawless, a former U.S. official, negotiated with Iranian government representatives on behalf of Bush for the release of the American hostages. In Washington on Friday, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater denied again that the U.S. government was negotiating with Iran. Fitzwater took issue with a report Friday in The Nation, a Jerusalem weekly, that talks on the hostages were held but recessed because of news leaks. ``No one is authorized to talk for the (U.S.) government,'' he said. ``As we have said before, there are all kinds of people around the world freelancing on this situation.'' Fitzwater also predicted more such stories, although he did not say why. ``Suffice it to say, we find them (the news reports) mostly detrimental,'' he said. ``What they do is build up people's expectations when they are not warranted.''
