NEGOTIATING WITH KIDNAPPERS, POW HOLDERS

Body of Drowned Israeli Swapped for Two Slain Hizbullah Fighters, One Prisoner - Amos Harel, Barak Ravid and Yoav Stern
Israel on Monday released a Hizbullah fighter suffering a mental illness and the bodies of two others, in exchange for the body of an Israeli civilian. Sources in the Prime Minister's Bureau said the swap also included information from Hizbullah regarding a separate issue, and that the information would be examined in the coming days. However, the Lebanese daily Al-Akbar on Tuesday reported that Hizbullah gave Israel documents written in missing Israeli aviator Ron Arad's handwriting. Arad's aircraft went down over Lebanon in 1986. The Israeli whose body was returned was Gabriel Dwait, a 27-year-old immigrant from Ethiopia, who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea on January 20, 2005.

Israel and Hizbullah have been conducting negotiations aimed at securing the release of captured Israel Defense Forces reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud (Udi) Goldwasser, whose abduction on July 12, 2006, sparked the Second Lebanon War. (Ha'aretz)

Nasrallah: Negotiations to free Goldwasser, Regev progressing (JPost)
Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said Tuesday there was "positive progress" in negotiations to swap captive IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev for Lebanese prisoners in Israel, leading to speculation that a deal involving Israel's release of Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar could be in the works.

"I assert that there are strenuous negotiations, continuing sessions that will be resumed within days," Nasrallah said in a speech broadcast on Hizbullah's Al-Manar television station.

"For the first time, I can speak about hope, about optimism and about positive progress and about an opportunity to reach a great achievement and a full exchange," he said. "I can speak for the first time about positive progress in the main negotiations over the two soldiers and the prisoners," he said.

Any such deal, however, may force the government to decide not to link it with IAF navigator Ron Arad, missing since 1986, or to information about the three IDF soldiers who went missing during the Battle of Sultan Yakoub in 1982.

Nasrallah referred to a document he claimed was given to Israel that showed where Arad had been searched for and said that no traces had been found of the captured navigator.

The Hizbullah leader said he did not have anything to say that would shed light on Arad's fate and seemed to be calling for a deal excluding the air force navigator.

Nasrallah's comments contradicted reports earlier in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar that Hizbullah had given Israel documents written by Arad around the time of his disappearance.

Germany to free 'Arad bargaining chips' (JPost)
Germany's chief federal prosecutor said two men convicted in the 1992 assassination of four Iranian opposition figures would be released early, despite a plea Tuesday by the family of missing Israeli air force navigator Ron Arad.

Arad's family asked that prosecutor Monika Harms make the early release of Kazem Darabi, an Iranian, and Abbas Rhayel, a Lebanese citizen, contingent upon Teheran explaining what happened to Arad, who disappeared after his plane was shot down over Lebanon in 1986.

Harms met in the southwestern German city of Karlsruhe with Arad's brother Chen and daughter Yuval, who believe that Ron is still alive in Iran.

The meeting took place, coincidentally, exactly 21 years after Arad was shot down.

Chen Arad told The Jerusalem Post from Germany that he would not comment on reports that the material received during the exchange of prisoners and bodies between Hizbullah and Israel on Monday was related to his brother until he and Yuval returned to Israel in a day or two.

UN secretary-general calls for immediate release of Israeli captives (YNet)
The Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed "the exchange of humanitarian gestures by Israel and Hizbullah mediated by his facilitator," a spokesman for Ban said in a statement.

"The secretary-general calls again on all sides concerned to move ahead decisively in releasing the two abducted Israeli soldiers without any further delay and to find the necessary solutions for the remaining Lebanese citizens that are still in Israeli detention. No effort should be spared to comply urgently with the basic humanitarian demands of compassion with the victims," the statement said.