Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Wednesday any prisoner exchange with the Lebanese Hezbollah militia would need Cabinet approval and ruled out West Bank Fatah leader Marwan Barghuti's release.
"I intend to put approval of the prisoner exchange deal, if we reach an agreement, before the entire Cabinet plenum for it to decide," Sharon said in an interview, which were published Wednesday.
"This is a complex problem of the first order, an issue that is not simple, and a very difficult decision on a moral level. Therefore, in my opinion it should be brought before the entire Cabinet ... Let there not be one minister who is not part of the discussion," Sharon told Maariv newspaper.
Sharon confirmed that the long-awaited deal was near but warned it was anything but wrapped up. "We are closer than before, but it is still far from being finished," he said.
Palestinian newspapers reported on Tuesday that Israel would release 400 Arab prisoners as part of the deal, around 185 of them Lebanese, Syrian and Jordanian while the rest would be Palestinian.
In October 2000, Hezbollah captured three Israeli soldiers -- whom Israel believes are dead -- in a disputed border area. They also seized businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum, a reserve colonel who the guerrilla group alleges was a spy.
Sharon denied reports by Arab sources that Barghuti, a firebrand of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction currently being tried by Israel on 26 counts of murder, could be released.
A prisoner swap could potentially give the stalled Middle East peace talks a vigorous shake, and might ease the persistent tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, which fought each other in southern Lebanon throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon three years ago, but the sides still periodically trade fire across the border.
Israel is demanding information on Ron Arad, an air force navigator who survived the downing of his plane in 1986, but whose fate is otherwise unknown. His status has been a long-running drama in Israel, similar to the American quest to locate soldiers missing in action from the Vietnam War.
Arad's brother expressed disappointment that the Israeli government appeared to be seeking only information, and not Arad, or, in the worst case, his remains.
"It is very sad," the brother, Dudu Arad, told Israel radio. "A soldier that the country sent is being abandoned." He said the Arad family met Prime Minister Ariel Sharon about 10 days ago, but has not received information since then.
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