Israeli minister says Egypt running prisoner talks

CAIRO, Oct 19 (Reuters) An Israeli minister said today that Egypt was in charge of negotiations on a prisonerc swap between Israel and the Palestinians and that the Jewish state had accepted some Egyptian ideas.

''We are looking forward to and we have accepted the framework that has been crystallised by the Egyptians,''Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer told reporters after talks in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

But it was not immediately clear if Mubarak had floated any proposals beyond those he made after Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier near Gaza on June 25. According to the proposal, the Palestinian militants would free the soldier in return for an Israeli commitment to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners at a future date.

Egypt blamed the Islamist group Hamas for preventing a deal on those terms.

Cairo has been mediating between the two sides on and off for more than three months, without any apparent progress.

Ben-Eliezer said the Egyptian government was working hard to bring about stability in West Asia and ''to change the situation in the south of Israel and mainly in Gaza''.

Asked about a prisoner swap in exchange for the Israeli soldier, he said: ''Because today the Egyptians are running the whole thing, I don't want to go into details.'' ''Egypt, as the leading power and the leading nation in the Arab world, knows exactly the sensitivity on both sides and I believe that they could come, they have come with a framework that will be accepted,'' he added.

Reuters PB GC1752