Hamas rejects Israeli demand to include captive in truce (Roundup)

May 13, 2008, 14:03 GMT

Gaza - Hamas rejected Tuesday an Israeli demand that any truce deal with Gaza militias include the release an Israeli soldier snatched in a June 2006 cross-border raid and held captive in the Gaza Strip ever since.

Linking the release of Gilad Shalit to a ceasefire, Hamas' Gaza Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told reporters, was 'an indirect Israeli escape from the Egyptian initiative to reach a truce.'

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told visiting Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman on Monday that Shalit's release had to be part of the ceasefire Cairo is trying to mediate between Israel and the Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip.

Shalit was taken by three Gaza militant groups, led by Hamas, in an early-morning raid on an Israeli army outpost south-east of the Gaza Strip. His captors are demanding Israel free 1,500 Palestinian prisoners, but negotiations for his release have so far been unsuccessful.

'Hamas will not keep waiting for the Zionist (Israeli) response to the Egyptian initiative of a truce, and it will use all possible means in order to confront the daily aggression and lift the blockade,' Abu Zuhri said.

Israel, he added, was 'not serious' about responding to the Egyptian truce efforts.

Although Olmert, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni did not reject the Egyptian mediation outright, they all told Suleiman the proposed ceasefire should include Shalit's release, and should also put an end to arms smuggling into the Strip from Egypt.

Egypt has been attempting to mediate a truce between the militants groups in the Strip led by Hamas, who launch mortars and improvised missiles at Israel, and Israel, which retaliates with air and ground strikes on the enclave.

Israel has been wary of entering into a truce with Hamas, fearing the militant groups would use the lull to rearm and reorganize.

At the same time, Israeli officials have said the Israeli military would scale down its air attacks on, and ground forays into, the Gaza Strip if the militant groups halted their continuous rocket fire on southern Israel.

But Defence Minister Ehud Barak also warned Monday that Israel would launch a massive operation in the Gaza Strip - as many have been demanding - if the militants groups there did not halt the rocket fire.

A senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, said Tuesday that Palestinians may yet accept a framework agreement for a peace treaty with Israel if a final deal is unreachable by the end of the year.

Nimr Hammad, Abbas' political advisor, told Voice of Palestine Radio that even though a framework agreement 'is not what we want and does not meet our expectations, it however will keep things moving and this means pressure on Israel.'

He said this issue will be discussed in a three-way meeting Abbas will hold with US President George W Bush and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday. Jordan's King Abdullah may also join the meeting, he said.

Abbas and Olmert pledged at last year's Annapolis peace summit to try and reach a peace deal by the end of 2008, and Israeli and Palestinian officials have been negotiating the so-called core issues of their conflict since the turn of the year.

However, some Israeli officials have since muted their optimism about reaching a peace agreement by the end of the year, and have instead spoken about producing a framework, or draft, peace treaty by the deadline, as Israel and Egypt did when negotiating their peace treaty between 1977 to 1979.

The sides first produced the 'Camp David Framework for Peace' in September 1978, and continued negotiating, finally signing a peace treaty - Israel's first with an Arab state - on March 26 1979.