When President Bush talked to Ambassador Djerejian, there was no mention of a message. Marlin, you said there had been no deals, no negotiation with hostage takers. It's my understanding that our contacts have been with the Syrian government. Ambassador Djerejian has stayed in close consultation with the foreign minister of Syria, and there have been no contacts directly with the hostage takers. We have no way of identifying any specific action on our part that could have been a contributing factor to this, no.
American goodwill is based on any number of things.
But certainly, we continue to press for the release of all seven hostages, and we would hope that this release would be the forerunner to the release of others, and would point the way towards the goodwill begets goodwill summation at some future point. But at this point, with seven hostages still in captivity, the situation has not changed a great deal. I didn't say that. I just said that we cannot speculate at this point. No decisions have been made along those lines.