Met Hizbollah captives in Israel: Red Cross

Tyre (Lebanon), Sept 16: The International Red Cross today said its officials had met three captured Hizbollah fighters in Israel and urged the Jewish state to declare the number of Lebanese guerrillas in its jails.

Andreas Wigger, head of the international committee's delegation in Lebanon, also asked Hizbollah's top official in southern Lebanon, Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, to allow his group access to the two Israeli soldiers snatched by the guerrilla group, ICRC spokesman Hisham Hassan said.

Hizbollah's capture of the two soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid triggered a 34-day war that killed nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mainly soldiers, before it ended with a UN-brokered truce.

''We have already visited three Hizbollah combatants currently in Israeli jails,'' Wigger told reporters after meeting Kaouk in the southern port city of Tyre. He said the organisation would meet relatives of the captives to pass on verbal messages from them.

Hassan told Reuters negotiations with Hizbollah and Israel for both sides to allow the Red Cross access to all prisoners were ongoing.

The Israeli army declined to comment on the number of Hizbollah prisoners and the Shi'ite Muslim group has not publicly released any information about the two soldiers.

Hizbollah's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview aired on Tuesday he expected a UN ''mediator'' to arrive in Lebanon next week to negotiate a deal to swap the two soldiers with Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.

The preamble of UN Security Council resolution 1701 that ended the war calls for the unconditional release of the soldiers. It ''encourages'' settling the Lebanese prisoner issue.

REUTERS

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