Hezbollah: No unconditional release of Israeli soldiers

A Hezbollah Cabinet minister today said the group would not release two captured Israeli soldiers unconditionally, and that they would only be freed in a prisoner exchange.

“There will be no unconditional release,” said Minister of Energy and Hydraulic Resources Mohammed Fneish, one of two Hezbollah members in Lebanon’s Cabinet. “This is not possible.

“There should be an exchange through indirect negotiations. This is the principle to which Hezbollah and the resistance are adhering.”

Fneish said Hezbollah’s plan from the beginning was to capture the two Israeli soldiers in order to arrange a prisoner swap through indirect negotiations.

“This was our position before the (Israeli) aggression (on Lebanon) and it has been strengthened after it,” he said.

Hezbollah did not mind if the Lebanese government entered negotiations with Israel to arrange the deal, he added.

But the group rejected any negotiations toward a wider peace settlement with Israel, another Hezbollah legislator said today.

“There is no possibility for direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel,” Hussein Haj Hassan told Al-Jazeera television.