Hezbollah says didn't confirm Israeli captives alive

DUBAI, July 23 (Reuters) The chief of the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah said his organisation did not tell France that the two Israeli soldiers it captured in 2006 were alive and declined to give any clues to their fate.

''This is not true,'' Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah told Al Jazeera television in an interview aired today, when asked about Hezbollah envoys' ''confirmation'' to France earlier this month that the two men were alive.

Hezbollah's seizure of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12, 2006, resulted in a 34-day war between the Iranian-backed group and Israel in which about 1,200 Lebanese and 157 Israelis were killed.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on July 15 that he ''understood'' the soldiers were alive after discussing the issue with Hezbollah envoys during talks with Lebanese political leaders in the French capital.

''I understood yes. As I really understood, yes,'' Kouchner said then, when asked by an Israeli reporter if they were alive.

Nasrallah said he was the only Hezbollah official who could answer questions about the fate of the soldiers.

''The minister (Kouchner) is clever ... he said 'I understood','' said Nasrallah. ''The brothers (envoys) do not answer this type of questions,'' he said, adding that he was the only person entitled to give any information on the subject.

''Any piece of information, word or indication can yield an important result on a humanitarian level (such as the release) of a detainee... why should we give it for free,'' he said.

In May, Nasrallah said talks to free the Israeli soldiers were making progress and it was a ''matter of time'' before a solution would be found.

The United Nations is mediating talks to secure a prisoner swap between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah want to exchange the soldiers for Lebanese and Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.

Nasrallah said Hezbollah fighters had spent three months preparing the ambush in which they seized the two soldiers.

The fighters had not tried to capture Israeli soldiers several days earlier to avoid harming Israeli civilians who were in the area at the time, he said.

REUTERS CS PM0020