It seems everyone wants to know what Mr. Anderson, the former Beirut hostage, has been doing.

A1 A Beirut hostage was threatened with death in 48 hours unless France explained Government statements about the hostages and French policy on selling arms to Iraq.

I thought of the Beirut hostage who could have escaped within the first few days of capture when a toilet window was left open.

Only days before the recent presidential election, the rightist challenger, Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, announced the freeing of three Beirut hostages.

She has kept a ribbon on her front lawn in Bethesda, Md., for six years to honor the Beirut hostages.

It might have even distracted listeners from Mr. Anderson, the former Beirut hostage, for the entire hour.

The former Beirut hostage, Brian Keenan, has celebrated a discreet wedding in a Dublin register office.

'I am sad we have not been afforded the same welcome given to the Beirut hostages,' he told a deeply moved audience at the AGM last month.

From then on, the US government was blind in its policy-making about the Beirut hostages, for example, because there were no longer any reliable day-to-day reports about their location and condition.

FORMER Beirut hostage Jack Mann's wife, Sunnie, 78, remained seriously ill yesterday.