MATT HEISTAND/Arizona Daily Wildcat Terry Waite, who was held hostage for five years in Beirut, discusses ways to combat global terrorism yesterday evening in the Integrated Learning Center. Waite, who spent four years in solitary confinement beginning in 1987, said the United States must work hard to ensure that people from the Middle East perceive it as an impartial peace broker.

Using his hostage negotiating experiences as a framework for addressing the roots of Middle Eastern terrorism, an author who was once taken captive in Beirut said last night that Western culture alienates people from the Middle East.

Terry Waite, a British author, humanitarian and hostage negotiator, told a crowd of about 150 people at the Integrated Learning Center that people in the Middle East are driven to terrorism because they believe their countrymen are manipulated by the rich West.

"Our responsibility is for one and another," he said. "The selfishness of some state policies must end."

Waite has experienced Middle Eastern culture firsthand as both a hostage negotiator and a hostage. In 1987, he was working in Beirut on behalf of the Archbishop of Canterbury to free four British hostages, when he asked the captors to visit the captives - one of whom was very ill.

The captors told Waite he could visit, but instead took him on a five-day trek through various safehouses and ultimately left him alone in a small room.

He spent the next four years in solitary confinement.

He said he survived the ordeal by not allowing himself to feel self-pity, regrets or oversentimentality.

Waite said he believes the war on terrorism will be won by a force of arms, but warned many times during his speech that fighting terrorism with weapons will only perpetuate anti-Western sentiments among Middle Eastern children.

Suicide bombers, he said, are driven to such extremes because of a "perception of injustice" that is fueled by America's treatment of them.

Waite said the recent fighting between Israelis and Palestinians has actually made terrorism in the region worse.

"What has been accomplished in the past few days · will fill more young people with feelings of hate towards Israelis and West," he said.

In order to help solve the conflict, Waite said America has to work very hard to be seen as an honest and impartial broker.

He said that many people see America's attempts at solving the situation as politicians' attempt to further their own interests, a perception he said America must fight if it hopes to solve the conflict.

Waite also said President Bush made a mistake when he named North Korea, Iran and Iraq as the Axis of Evil.

"There is no doubt that the acts of terrorism are horrible, but demonizing the situation like that is not a solution," he said.