"Israel" hinders prisoner swap

Source: Alalam.ir, 11-4-2007
GAZA CITY--Hamas charged on Wednesday that "Israel" was blocking a prisoner exchange deal for a soldier held by Palestinian Resistance Fighters, as the Zionist regime said there were "limits" to negotiations.
"`Israel` is the main obstacle at reaching an accord on an exchange of prisoners," a spokesman for Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas, Ghazi Hamad, told reporters.
Referring to an "Israeli" soldier seized by Palestinian fighters, last June, he said that "with the position that `Israel` has adopted, it is confirming that it does not want Gilad Shalit freed and does not want an accord."
"Israel" has expressed "disappointment and reservations" with the prisoners that Palestinians want freed in return for Shalit, following Ehud Olmert`s first meeting with security chiefs to discuss the list, which it received through Egyptian mediators.
The "Israeli" war minister Amir Peretz warned on Wednesday that "in all negotiations there are limits."
"But the government will do everything and will use all the means to ensure the safe return of Shalit and two other servicemen, held by Lebanon`s Hizbullah," he told "Israeli" public radio.
Olmert will convene the security cabinet on Sunday to set "Israel`s" criteria for clearing prisoners for release, although "Israel" has said it would not free prisoners who carried out military operations and killed "Israeli" soldiers.
But Hamad said "there is no excuse to refuse the names presented to `Israel`."
"In the past, `Israel` has carried out prisoner exchanges with Hizbullah members who had killed `Israelis`," he said, referring to the Hizbullah resistance fighters with which the occupation regime fought a 34-day war last summer.
Earlier Wednesday, an "Israeli" minister said charismatic Palestinian leader Marwan Barghuti was not on the list of some 450 names handed over to "Israel", contrary to reports earlier from sources close to the Palestinian government.
"Marwan Barghuti`s name does not appear on the list" which Egyptian mediators handed to "Israel" last week, Housing Minister and member of the security cabinet Meir Sheetrit said.
Over the past 30 years, "Israel" has carried out several prisoner exchanges, most of them with Lebanese groups.
In the last such exchange in January 2004, brokered by Germany, "Israel" freed more than 400 mostly Palestinian prisoners and returned the bodies of 60 mostly Lebanese fighters, in return for an "Israeli" businessman captured by Hizbullah and the bodies of three "Israeli" soldiers.