Plans to free soldier 'sabotaged'

2006-07-12 12:56

Cairo - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Wednesday an unnamed party sabotaged his mediation efforts for the release of an Israeli soldier captured by Gaza militants.

Mubarak said: "I had reached an honourable solution to the crisis of the captured soldier and had obtained from Israel that it freed a large number of Palestinian detainees."

He said he had reached the breakthrough in the negotiations after contacts with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and Hamas political supremo Khaled Meshaal.

Hamas' armed wing was one of three Palestinian militant groups that claimed the June 25 capture of the Israeli corporal after an attack on a southern Gaza border post.

Mubarak said: "But Hamas was submitted to pressure and other parties, whom I will not identify, intervened in the contacts engaged by Egypt, raising new hurdles for an agreement which was imminent."

Some Israeli newspapers had accused Meshaal's Syrian and Iranian backers of obstructing a deal. The soldier's captors had demanded the release of 1 000 Arab prisoners from Israeli jails.

Since Gilad Shalit's capture, Israel had launched a massive offensive against the Gaza Strip, killing 60 Palestinians in the past week alone and striking the territory's infrastructure.

- AFP