The release of John McCarthy may signal a sea change in the Middle East hostage saga but the kidnappers’ bottom line demand is still as intractable as ever.

The twisted logic for hostage-taking by pro-Iranian militants in Beirut has always been demands for the release of Moslems in Israeli captivity including Sheikh Obeid who was abducted by Israeli commandos from the Lebanon in July 1989.

Although the Israelis are willing to make a deal, they want the seven Israeli servicemen missing in Lebanon, or their bodies if any have died in captivity, returned.

The clear drawback is that the Israelis were seized by different groups, some with no connections with pro-Iranian Hizbollah (Party of God). Iran’s original support for hostage-taking – to prove to the United States and the West that however powerful it could do nothing to save its citizens in the Lebanon, and also to pressurise the US to return billions of dollars of Iranian assets frozen in American banks since 1979 – has been dropped.

The release of Mr McCarthy indicates that Syria and Iran now recognise that the hostage issue remains a barrier to normal relations with the Western powers and see the United Nations, acting as an honest broker, as the only hope.

But with the crucial Middle Eastern conference expected to start in October new momentum has been given to efforts to remove any obstacle by releasing all the hostages.

Mr McCarthy, with a message for UN general-secretary Perez de Cuellar, will be used as another means to pressurise Israel.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara said today that Mr McCarthy’s release was a test to see whether the West would now bring pressure on Israel.

He said the release by the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad (Holy War) group was ‘good news’ and claimed Syria had exerted tremendous pressure to try to prevent the kidnappers linking the release of Western hostages with that of Lebanese and Palestinians held in Israel.

However, he said the kidnappers were insisting on ‘the release of their relatives and friends (held) in prisons inside Israel’.

Islamic Jihad first surfaced in 1983 when it launched two suicide attacks on bases of US and French soldiers in Beirut, killing about 300 servicemen. It has claimed responsibility for a string of other bombings and several assassinations in Lebanon and the Middle East as well as the abduction of more than a dozen Westerners in Beirut.

Wife’s anguish after no news of Jackie WHILE John McCarthy had the rest of his life to look forward to today, the wife of one of the other hostages still held captive was dreading the next 24 hours.

Sunny Mann, wife of the eldest hostage Jackie, said she was pleased for Mr McCarthy but heartbroken that his release confirmed her husband’s continued captivity.

She said: ‘I don’t know how I will cope. I don’t know how I got through yesterday. ‘I can’t tell you how I will get through the rest of today.’ Mr Mann, 77, a retired airline pilot ,disappeared in West Beirut on 12 May, 1989.

Mrs Mann added: ‘I’m very, very happy for John and his family and friends, but I’m very upset naturally that it’s not my own husband.

‘Nobody has heard anything about Jackie at all. I’m at the end of my wits. ”I have spent two days with my bags packed waiting by the phone to go to Damascus – everyone thought it would be Jackie and it’s John.’