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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Olmert: more time needed before prisoner swap with Hizbullah |
| 2008-06-25 |
| Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that indirect negotiations with Hizbullah for the release of two captured soldiers were still under way and would take time. "The negotiations will take more time ," Olmert said before flying to Egypt for talks with President Hosni Mubarak about a third soldier being held in the Gaza Strip. However, other reports said on Tuesday that Olmert would ask his inner security cabinet on Sunday to approve a swap. Sources close to the talks have said the swap would involve Israel releasing four or five Lebanese prisoners, including Samir Kontar, who is serving a life sentence for a deadly 1979 raid and whom Israeli officials previously described as a "bargaining chip" for the return of an Israeli Air Force navigator missing since his fighter-bomber went down over Lebanon in the 1980s. The two soldiers are believed to have been wounded during their capture and Hizbullah has provided no proof that they are still alive. Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Tuesday the two captured soldiers should return to Israel, "whether dead or alive." He also addressed a recommendation by some officials that the two captured troops should be declared dead. "Even if the process [of proclaiming them deceased] that began yesterday comes to pass - it should not in any way stop the negotiations to bring the soldiers home," said Barak. In a move that outraged the families of the troops, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the Israeli military's chief rabbi, Brigadier General Avi Ronsky, began the process on Monday. The rabbi is the sole authority on the matter of declaring the missing soldiers dead. Ronsky received the relevant intelligence information and will determine whether or not do declare the two soldiers "killed in action whose place of burial is unknown." Defense officials clarified the decision on Tuesday and said it stemmed from recently obtained intelligence information. According to the officials, past intelligence indicated that one of the two captives was killed during the initial raid and the other was gravely wounded. However the new information, they said, sheds light on the past working assumption - and was therefore transferred to the chief military rabbi. The families of the abducted Israeli reservists called on Monday evening for Olmert and Barak to bring the details of the deal to free their sons to a vote in the cabinet. At the end of a series of meetings with various members of the Israeli Knesset and the government ministers, the families said that they have "waited enough." "At the moment, the details of the deal have been consolidated, and ministers of the government have been updated and support [the deal]," they said in a statement. "There is no reason that the making of the decision should continue to be delayed," the statement added |
| Posted by:Pappy |