Last update - 00:00 26/02/2008
Shalit`s French lawyers say planning to meet his kidnappers
By Reuters
Two French lawyers representing Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, who was abducted by Palestinian militants in June 2006, will travel to Gaza this week to discuss his fate with his kidnappers, a member of the family's legal team said on Tuesday.
Hamas, one of the groups holding Shalit, denied planning to hold talks with the two lawyers.
The lawyers told a Paris news conference that Hamas had forwarded a letter from Shalit, who also has French nationality, to his family in recent weeks and he appeared to be in reasonable health, mentally and physically.
As a result of the goodwill shown by Hamas in sending the letter a dialogue had been established with the Islamist movement, said Emmanuel Altit, one of the legal representatives.
"This dialogue led to an official invitation from the Hamas leadership to go to Gaza to meet them for talks to try to find a reasonable solution to this painful matter," he said, adding he and fellow lawyer Stephane Zerbib would leave on Saturday.
Shalit, then 19, was abducted by Palestinian gunmen from Gaza during a cross-border raid in June 2006.
Hamas has said it will not release him unless Israel meets its demand to free nearly 1,400 Palestinian prisoners, including 350 with life sentences. Israel has rejected these terms.
A Hamas official said his organization had nothing to discuss with the lawyers.
"We deny what those two lawyers have said. We have nothing to do with them or to talk to them about the Shalit affair," Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said.
"This is a unique issue that is being given a unique treatment. It seems that those two lawyers are carrying out media propaganda for their own interests," he added.
Altit told journalists in Paris that some Hamas leaders had threatened to kill the Israeli soldier, but that the letter had reassured his family about his well-being.
"Clearly he wrote it under the control, under the supervision of his jailers, his abductors," he said.
Nevertheless, it showed that he did not appear to have been too badly affected by his incarceration, Altit added.
"In spite of the ill will of some of the protagonists involved ... we are hopeful of a solution," he said.
Efforts spearheaded by Egyptian mediators to negotiate Shalit's release came to a halt in June last year after Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Discussions since then have stalled over the prisoner swap issue.
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