The families of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbullah appealed to the French government yesterday to use its contacts with Lebanon to help bring their sons home.
"France is the first place we chose to come because we think here we've got our best chance," said Omri Avni, whose son-in- law Ehud Goldwasser was captured by Hizbullah on July 12th.
"Using diplomatic connections, formal or not formal, between France and the Lebanon government, they can help us to bring our sons back home," he said in Paris.
"You have the connections with the Lebanese nation," Malka Goldwasser, the soldier's mother, said.
France has criticised Israel's offensive on its former colony Lebanon, unleashed after the soldiers' capture, but it has also called on Hizbullah to release the two men immediately.
Members of the Goldwasser family and the family of Eldad Regev, who was taken in the same incident, are due to meet French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy and an official from President Jacques Chirac's office today.
The father of Cpl Gilad Shalit, who was taken earlier in a separate incident by Hamas and who has French citizenship, may also be present, according to officials from the Jewish group Siona, which helped organise the families' visit to France.
"We have the feeling that here in France, we will be able to get support that we cannot get in Israel," Avni said. "We need to know if they are okay if they are healthy and if anyone can help us to bring them back home because the army cannot do it."
Ms Goldwasser and the other families did not question the actions of the Israeli government and placed the blame for the 15- day-old crisis squarely with Hizbullah which has unleashed a stream of rocket attacks on northern Israel.
"We want to underline that those who are holding Eldad and Udi and Gilad Shalit as well have no respect for accepted conventions," said Eyal Regev, brother of Eldad Regev, speaking in Hebrew through a French interpreter.
"We have had no information on the condition of the soldiers or the state they're in, and that's why we're asking the French government and the international community to help us."