Israel-Hezbollah prisoner swap set for Wednesday

Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah group will exchange prisoners on Wednesday under a U.N.-mediated deal, the Israeli prisons service said on Sunday.

A spokesman said Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev would be exchanged for five Lebanese prisoners, including Samir Qantar, jailed for life for killing an Israeli policeman, another man and his 4-year-old daughter in a raid on northern Israel in 1979.

Hezbollah has given no word on the condition of the two soldiers, although they are widely presumed to be dead. They were captured in a cross-border Hezbollah raid that led to a war between the Iranian-backed group and Israel in 2006.

The prisons service spokesman said the exchange would begin on Wednesday. He declined to say where the swap would take place. Previous exchanges have taken place at the Naqoura border crossing on the Mediterranean coast.

As part of the deal, negotiated by a German intelligence officer, Israel will hand over the bodies of 200 Arabs killed while infiltrating northern Israel.

Hezbollah will return the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in south Lebanon in 2006.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had described Qantar as the last bargaining chip for word on the fate of Israeli airman Ron Arad.

Arad disappeared after bailing out during a bombing run on Lebanon in 1986.

Under the prisoner exchange agreement, Hezbollah provided Israel with a report on Arad, who was captured by a different Lebanese group, Amal.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak told security officials that the Hezbollah dossier failed to give a definitive answer on Arad's fate.

"The report on Ron Arad, as passed by Hezbollah, does not give a clear answer on the fate of Ron Arad and does not resolve the issue. We are compelled to continue to work to discover what happened to him," the defence ministry said in a statement recounting Barak's words.

On Sunday, Israeli television showed two previously unseen photographs of Arad in captivity that accompanied the Hezbollah document and which were handed over to his family on Saturday with letters believed to have been written several years ago.