Former Iranian hostage meets his captor

PARIS — For Barry Rosen, the decision was the toughest in nearly 20 years. Should he come face to face with a man who held him and more than 50 other Americans hostage in Iran for 444 agonizing days as mobs chanted "Death to America" outside?Rosen, former press officer — and captive — at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, decided it was time. For two hours Friday, he shared a speaker\'s platform with Abbas Abdi, onetime Iranian revolutionary student leader and a mastermind of the 1979 embassy takeover.What\'s important now is not to forget or forgive, Rosen, 54, told a conference on American-Iranian relations, but for the United States and Iran to move on."The past can\'t be made to go away, and shouldn\'t," the former U.S. diplomat said. "But a new beginning can be made."At the end, a solemn Rosen, now executive director of public affairs at Teachers College, part of Columbia University in New York, got up and stood at the right of the stubble-chinned Abdi, 42. The men clasped hands, and the bearded and bald American slapped his former captor on the back."The past cannot be altered," said Abdi, who now works as a columnist and editorial board member at Salam, a Tehran newspaper. "Instead we must focus on building a better future, which is unquestionably within our capabilities."Abdi offered no apologies. Instead, he said the student occupation saved American lives by preventing an attack from armed Iranian radicals.Friday\'s unprecedented encounter took place under the aegis of an organization headed by Eric Rouleau, a former French ambassador who, as correspondent for the Paris daily Le Monde, covered the hostage crisis. The meeting was the idea of Iranian friends of Abdi\'s, who contacted Rouleau\'s Cyprus-based Center for World Dialogue.Rosen said he agreed to take part after struggling to "put my resentment behind me."On three separate occasions, guards were called in to clear the hall of Iranian exiles who stood up and shouted that Abdi had had a hand in the deaths of 30,000 political prisoners and other alleged crimes of Iran\'s Islamic regime.According to Abdi, the original goal of the students was to pressure the United States into deporting Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who had fled into exile. The militants\' leaders believed the embassy occupation would last no longer than a week.Abdi said conditions were so humane and friendly in the embassy that captors and captives played chess together — an assertion Rosen ridiculed. Before the two men came to Paris, they said, they had no recollection of ever having met.In an interview, Rosen said he believed Abdi had to be very guarded about what he said Friday afternoon. In 1993, Abdi was arrested and served an eight-month prison term for questioning the political power of conservative mullahs. Even before he arrived in France, one Tehran newspaper denounced his decision to come."He has to go back to Iran," Rosen said. "I\'ll go back to New York City, and people can call me an idiot for what I\'ve done. But that\'s all I\'m going to get. About Abdi ... I don\'t know."