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Hezbollah Denies Switzerland's Involvement in Captive Swap
Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah, or Party of God, has denied Switzerland's involvement in negotiations on captive swap with Israel, Lebanon's official NNA news agency reported on Wednesday.
"The resistance has an effective channel for such negotiations with Israel," Hezbollah Secretary General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah was quoted by NNA as saying. The news agency did give further details.
Hezbollah fighters captured three Israeli soldiers in the disputed Shebaa Farms area last October. Two weeks later, Hezbollah claimed another capture of a Mossad agent, who was inveigled by Hezbollah intelligence agents from Europe to Beirut.
Hezbollah has conditioned the release of the four Israelis on the return of 19 Lebanese detainees in Israeli jails. later on, it also demanded that Israel set free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and offer maps depicting the location of some 130,000 land mines left over by Israel in southern Lebanon.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has expressed hope that Switzerland would help reveal the fate of a former Israeli airman, who has been missing since his plane was shot down during an air raid on a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon in 1986.
Sharon has also urged Switzerland to check up the conditions of the four Israeli captives and play an important role in the swap negotiations between the two sides.
Israel withdrew from south Lebanon last May, ending a 22-year occupation. However, Hezbollah has vowed to continue fighting against Israel as long as it still holds the Shebaa Farms.
But Israel claims that it occupied the farms area from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War and the issue should be resolved in peace talks with Damascus.
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