Hezbollah: Only exchange will win back troops

The Daily Star

BEIRUT: "The whole world will not be able to retrieve the two captured Israeli soldiers except through indirect negotiations that will lead to a swap with our detainees in Israel," Hizbullah's leader declared Wednesday. Speaking at a news conference in Beirut's southern suburbs after the resistance group captured two Israeli soldiers, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said: "It would be a delusion if anyone thinks that they can retrieve the captured Israeli soldiers. These soldiers will not return to Israel until after one means is utilized, which is indirect negotiations, and a swap of the soldiers with the Lebanese and Arab detainees in the Israeli prisons."

Nasrallah added: "Of course, Lebanon, our officials ... Syria ... Iran ... are all under heavy pressure from the international community ... to release these soldiers ... But we are used to pressure."

He joked: "What do they want us to do? Hand over the soldiers and apologize? What kind of world are they living in?"

Nasrallah also advised the Israeli Cabinet, which was in the process of meeting Wednesday night, "not to upstage each other that they can do this and that. It was that same reason that the former negotiations which we were conducting failed."

He added: "The last time we reached an agreement with the Israelis in which our longest-serving detainee in Israeli prisons, Samir Qantar, and others were to be released, but the Israeli officials started the upstaging process and their voting ended 12 [against the negotiations] to 11."

Whatever the decision the Israelis make, "we are ready," Nasrallah said.

Nasrallah also responded to threats made by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who vowed a "painful blow" against Lebanon, and the Jewish state's top soldier, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, who threatened to "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years."

"If they decide to confront us, then they should prepare themselves for a surprise ... today's Lebanon is different than the Lebanon of 20 years ago," the Hizbullah leader warned.

"This is our natural right to resist. It is the only reasonable way. International law supports us on this. Besides, we never surprised the Israelis. On the contrary, we have been warning, through my speeches, for a long time, that as long we have a detainee in their prisons, we will try to capture Israeli soldiers to swap them," he added.

"This is the only way to shed the light on the suffering of 10,000 Lebanese, Palestinian and Arab detainees in Israeli prisons ... who are being treated brutally ... and it is the only way to release them, after diplomatic means, political discussions, the international community's interventions and organizations failed to release them." Read more

db: Part of this news conference can be viewed via Link TV - see 'Middle East News' link in sidebar - it's the second item in the stream.