By NNN-KUNA,
Jerusalem : Israel will not give green light to the prisoners-swap with Hezbollah until it receives a satisfying report on a missing Israeli pilot,a spokesman of the Israeli government said Wednesday.
The announcement came after an Israeli official signed the swap agreement in Germany.
Radio Israel said, Wednesday, that Israel got a report on the pilot Ron Arad who went missing in 1986 after his aircraft crashed in Lebanon.
However, it was reported in Israel that the Israeli official in Germany refused taking the report to Israel and told the German mediator to return it to Hezbollah as it “does not answer all questions.”
Maariv Israeli paper said that Israel wants to know the names of people Hezbollah interrogated to ascertain the fate of the pilot, in addition to when they were questioned.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Ministerial Council for Security and Political Affairs will hold on Wednesday a special meeting to discuss the security situation on the northern borders with Lebanon and within Israel.
The Israeli radio reported Wednesday morning, “This meeting was not scheduled beforehand,” adding that “members of the council will review reports from security officials on the increasing power of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.”
Ministers will also review reports on smuggling weapons from Syria to Lebanon.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had called French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner Tuesday night, where they discussed the Jewish state’s situation with Lebanon.
Barak complained to the French minister “that the international peacekeeping forces (UNIFIL) are not fulfilling their duties in southern Lebanon”, asserting that “Israel will not allow the continuous violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, as weapons continue to be transported into southern Lebanon”.
In another development, Turkey is seeking to hold direct negotiations between Israel and Syria in the future, especially after they have both agreed on the general guidelines of the negotiations to sign a peace agreement, the Israeli press reported Wednesday.
“We expect the next discussions between Israel and Syria to be direct, with military personnels from both sides taking part in order to set up security arrangements and a future buffer-zone between them,” the Haaretz newspaper said Wednesday, citing an informed Turkish official.
The unnamed official further said that “the Syrians and the Israelis cannot expect to go on for long in these indirect negotiations, where Turkey is operating as a ‘mobile phone’.”
He added “there is a need now for direct negotiations and it would be silly for us to start carrying maps from one room to another to help both sides agree when we could start discussing the issue of normalizing Syrian-Israeli relations.”