Region | Palestinian Territories
Israeli negotiator to pick up report on long-missing airman
An Israeli negotiator was in Europe on Monday to pick up a report compiled by Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas on a long-missing Israeli airman, part of a prisoner swap deal between the two sides.
- AP
- Published: 12:20 July 7, 2008
Occupied Jerusalem: An Israeli negotiator was in Europe on Monday to pick up a report compiled by Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas on a long-missing Israeli airman, part of a prisoner swap deal between the two sides, defense officials said.
Negotiator Ofer Dekel is to receive the report from a UN appointed German official who mediated the deal.
The report is supposed to detail efforts the Iranian-backed Hezbollah made, to find out what happened to airman Ron Arad after his plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986.
Arad was captured alive by Shiite militants, and changed hands several times before disappearing without a trace two decades ago.
There have been reports that Arad was transferred to Hezbollah and then to Iran, but no reliable evidence of his fate has ever surfaced.
In exchange for the report on Arad, Israel is to provide information on four Iranian diplomats who disappeared in Lebanon in 1982. Iran claims they were kidnapped by Lebanese militiamen allied with Israel, who delivered them to Israeli troops.
The exchange of reports is part of a wider deal in which Israel is to hand over to Hezbollah four Lebanese prisoners in exchange for two soldiers Israel believes is dead. The soldiers' capture in a July 2006 cross-border raid touched off Israel's second war in Lebanon.
One of the Lebanese convicts, Samir Kantar, who is to be freed in the deal, has been held in an Israeli prison for nearly 30 years for his role in a 1979 attack Israelis perceive as one of the cruelest in their history.
Israel had hoped Kantar would be a bargaining chip to wrest information from Hezbollah about Arad's fate, but recently concluded that Hezbollah has no new information about the airman.
On Sunday, Israel TV showed video of tractors beginning the process of exhuming the bodies of Hezbollah fighters that also are to be handed over as part of the deal.
No firm timetable for carrying out the swap has been announced, but Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has said it would take place in mid-July.
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