JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israel signed an undertaking in front of UN officials on Monday to go ahead with a proposed prisoner swap with Shiite militant group Hezbollah, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman said.
"The Israeli pointman Ofer Dekel signed in the presence of the UN officials the arrangement proposed by the UN," spokesman Mark Regev said.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said last Wednesday that the proposed exchange would take place within two weeks.
The Israeli cabinet approved the deal last month under which it is to release five Lebanese prisoners, the remains of Hezbollah fighters and an undetermined number of Palestinians in exchange for the bodies of soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.
The pair were captured, badly wounded, by Hezbollah in a cross-border raid on July 12, 2006 that sparked a devastating 34-day war in Lebanon that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his cabinet the two soldiers were dead.
But Nasrallah said that "so far Hezbollah has not handed over any information about the fate of the two soldiers. Anything said in Israel is mere speculation. We have provided no information."
Nasrallah said that Hezbollah had agreed to Israeli demands for information on missing airman Ron Arad as a precondition for the exchange and would pass it on through a German mediator.
But the Israeli prime minister's spokesman said on Monday that that had yet to happen.
"We have not received the promised report about Ron Arad," Regev said. "We are waiting for it. When we receive it, the government will discuss further moves."
On Friday, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Israel had received the report about Arad, missing since 1986, and added that it said the airman had been dead for more than 10 years.
On Sunday, Israeli officials said the army was preparing to start exhuming the bodies of dead Hezbollah fighters in readiness for the prisoner swap.
The army declared a cemetery for enemy combatants near Amiad in northern Israel a closed military zone in preparation for the exhumation that was expected to start on Monday and last several days, the officials said.
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