Hamas halts prisoner-swap deal talks with Israel (Roundup)

Feb 2, 2010, 17:28 GMT

Gaza City - The indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas on a prisoner exchange have been halted, officials in the Islamist movement ruling Gaza said Tuesday.

'The current circumstances do not allow a continuation of the indirect talks to finalize a prisoner swap deal,' said spokesman Aiman Taha.

He said Hamas was halting the talks following the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, 'but we cannot say that the talks have completely stopped. The movement will later make a final decision.'

Al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas official who Israel said was involved in the smuggling of weapons into Gaza, was found dead in a Dubai hotel room on January 20.

Hamas has accused Israel of being behind his death.

Hamas and two other armed groups snatched an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in a raid on an Israeli army base south-east of the Gaza Strip in June 2006.

Shalit's captors demand the release of some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails in exchange for Shalit.

Negotiations on the exchange accelerated after a German mediator became involved last summer, and were reportedly close to a breakthrough before Christmas.

However, since then, they have again stalled.

The talks have been held in great secrecy, with few, if any, details reaching the public. But, according to reports at the time, the negotiations bogged down over the question of how many of the freed prisoners could return to their homes and how many Israel was demanding be exiled to the Gaza Strip.

Another senior Hamas official, speaking on condition of anonymity, also told the Saudi daily Okaz that Hamas decided to suspend the indirect talks in protest to the murder of al-Mabhouh.

The official told the daily that: 'Israel is fully responsible for the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh ... Therefore Hamas decided to halt the indirect talks.'

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the Hamas claim, and placed the onus completing the deal firmly on the Islamist organization.

'If Hamas wants a deal, there will be a deal. If it does not want one, there will not be one,' he told a joint news conference with visiting Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Jerusalem late Tuesday afternoon.

'We have the aim of bringing Gilad Shalit home safe and sound,' he said. 'Our second aim is not to allow murderous terrorists to return to murder our citizens ... These are the two answers we also gave the German mediator.'