MIDDLE EAST: Italy is seeking a role in negotiations over the release of Israeli and Hizbullah prisoners, including two Israeli soldiers whose seizure sparked the recent war between the two sides, Hizbullah said.
In a television interview last night, Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said "contacts" had been made which might eventually lead to negotiations. "It seems that Italy is trying to get into the subject," Sheikh Nasrallah told privately-owned Beirut station New TV. "The United Nations is interested and the negotiations would be through [Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih] Berri," he added, according to excerpts released.
Sheikh Nasrallah also said that Hizbullah would not have captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12th if it had known a war would follow.
"We did not think, even one percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude," he said. "You ask me, if I had known on July 11th ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not."
Hizbullah says it wants to exchange the two soldiers for some of the thousands of Arab prisoners, including Lebanese, in Israeli jails.
Israel responded to the capture of the soldiers by launching air strikes and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon which lasted 34 days. Hizbullah responded by firing rockets into Israel. Nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers, died in the war.
Since then, Lebanon has started rebuilding and has received pledges of aid, including one for $230 million (€180 million) from Israel's principal ally, the United States. But speaking in Jerusalem yesterday, a senior US legislator put conditions on the aid, saying it would be released only if Lebanon agreed to the deployment of international troops on its border with Syria.
Tom Lantos, the top Democrat on the International Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives, said he was putting a legal block on the money until Beirut agreed.
"It is very much my hope that I will be able to lift the hold when the reasons will no longer be present," he said.
Since the war ended, Israel has demanded the deployment of UN troops along Lebanon's border with Syria, saying it is necessary to prevent the smuggling of arms to Hizbullah. But Syria has said such a move would be hostile.
That would effectively cut Lebanon off from the outside world, as its only other land border is with Israel, which it does not recognise, and it is currently subject to an Israeli air and sea blockade.
Some 130 French Foreign Legion engineers arrived in Lebanon on a humanitarian mission to install bridges in the south to replace those damaged by Israeli air strikes. Lebanese president Emile Lahoud said Israeli operations since the truce, including a commando raid in the eastern Lebanese Bekaa Valley "confirm once more Israel's hostile intent towards Lebanon".