Hizbullah confirms talks on prisoner swap
Clancy Chassay in Beirut
Wednesday November 1, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Hizbullah’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah speaks to a reporter on his group’s Manar television channel. During the interview, he confirmed his organisation was in talks with Israel on a prisoner exchange. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Hizbullah confirmed today that indirect talks with Israel on a prisoner exchange were under way, but warned that any attempt by an international force to disarm the group would transform Lebanon into another Iraq or Afghanistan.
Speaking to Hizbullah's al-Manar television in a pre-recorded interview aired last night, the group's leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said a UN mediator had been meeting officials from both sides in an effort to secure the release of the two Israeli soldiers whose capture sparked Israel's 34-day war with Hizbullah.
"They are serious negotiations ... We have reached a stage of exchanging ideas, proposals or conditions," he said. He refused to say when a deal might be reached.
Israel, which is yet to comment on the issue, is believed to be holding at least four Hizbullah guerrillas captured during the war, and at least three Lebanese prisoners who have been detained for a number of years.
The Shia leader's comments came after the UN security council's renewed call on Monday for the disbanding and disarming of Hizbullah, a demand stipulated in resolutions 1559 and 1701 and part of a UN-brokered ceasefire that ended the war.
Hizbullah's deputy secretary general, Sheikh Naim Qasim, told the Guardian that the group could remain armed indefinitely. Speaking from a modest room in one of Hizbullah's many safehouses in an apartment building in a backstreet of Beirut's southern suburbs, the party's second in command linked its armed status to the fate of the Palestinians and implied that Hizbullah would never make peace with Israel.
Full story.