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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Hamas-Egypt differences over prisoner swap widen |
| 2008-08-11 |
| (Xinhua) -- Hamas and Egypt have widened their differences over prisoner swap between Hamas and Israel, and calls among Hamas to withdraw the Egyptian mediation increased, a Palestinian official source said Sunday. The source made the remarks to the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat Arabic newspaper as he held that "there are deep differences between Hamas and Israel" over a deal for the swap under Egyptian mediation. Hamas demands Israel to free 1,000 of some 11,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who was kidnapped in Gaza in June 2006. But the two sides have failed to reach an agreement up to now. "Many in Hamas accuse Cairo of delaying the process of mediation with Israel and not adopting the conditions that Hamas puts to free Shalit," the newspaper quoted the source as saying. The differences increased to the point of calls for withdrawing the file from Egypt and asking a European side to mediate instead, said the source. In July, German mediators succeeded to achieve swap between Israel and Lebanon's guerrilla group of Hezbollah. |
| Posted by:Fred |