Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday called Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz from the United States to assure him that reports he had refused to back him are false.

Olmert said he was astounded to read the headlines, and that he had not intended his responses to be interpreted this way.

Sources in the Prime Minister's entourage expressed great embarrassment at the reports on Tuesday that he declined to reply to questions on whether he backed the IDF Chief. Reporters who attended the press conference inferred from his response that he refuses to express his backing of Halutz.

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Olmert - in the U.S. this week - was asked three times by accompanying reporters whether he supported Halutz, Army Radio reported Tuesday. The prime minister did not publicly back his military chief, saying he didn't respond to "anonymous" calls for Halutz's resignation, the report said.

In his first public reaction to the renewed calls on Halutz to resign for failures in the summer's war in Lebanon, Defense Minister Amir Peretz on Tuesday said he intends "to give my full backing to the Chief of Staff, the generals, commanders and troops."

Speaking during a joint visit with Halutz to the Tze'elim training base, Peretz said "the irresponsible outrage at the Chief of Staff and the IDF itself must stop. Panels have been appointed, investigative teams are at work, and the IDF has never checked and investigated itself as it is today. Let them do their job," he added.

Halutz also rejected the calls on him to resign: "I'm dealing [with criticism] by doing, some talk and some work, and we are on the side of those who work."

The Defense Minister asked of the media to allow the IDF to prepare for the tasks lying ahead.

"We are busy with drawing training plans, renewing gear, improving preparedness. Please, let us work; the criticism is justified, we do not intend to cover anything up, the investigations will be transparent, but right now let us work, we need to do this for the State of Israel," he said.

Major General (res.) Doron Almog, who headed the internal investigation into the July abduction of two soldiers by Hezbollah, presented his findings on Sunday.

Several senior reserve officers, including some with the rank of major general, have lambasted Halutz and called for his resignation in the wake of the investigations into the failures of the second Lebanon war.

Their views were shared by senior officers on active duty but the latter refused to make public statements on the subject. They intimated that Halutz should take responsibility and go home, and that Defense Minister Amir Peretz should intervene so the turmoil in the army can settle down.

Among those who expressed the need for Halutz to retire were Avigdor (Yanush) Ben-Gal, who told Army Radio on Monday, "Halutz will come to the realization that he cannot rehabilitate the army after the failure... He didn't act like a commander but rather like the head of a board of directors. He does not have the essence of a military leader."

Missing soldiers' comrades blast report findings
The comrades of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the two IDF reservists snatched by Hezbollah in the cross-border raid which sparked the war, were outraged to hear the conclusions reached by the internal investigation into the incident.

The conclusions questioned Regev and Goldwasser's abilities as soldiers. According to their comrades, "it seems that they are trying to lay the blame on the simple soldier. The things Almog noted would not have prevented the abduction."

During a Sunday press conference in which Almog presented the findings of the probe into the incident, comrades of the two abducted soldiers, including their battalion and company commanders, came under severe criticism.

According to the report, during the 12 days that the battalion carried out patrols of the fence areas contrary to "Carthage," the plan developed by division commander Brigadier General Gal Hirsch to prevent the possibility of Hezbollah kidnapping IDF soldiers.

Almog said the soldiers did not follow orders to deploy far from the fence and observe: "We discovered that most of the time they were far from the fence, they did not set up observation posts but spent most of their time resting and reading books."

Regarding the abduction itself, Almog said that "from the communications recording we learned the patrol deployed almost as if it was going on a trip, not an operation... Goldwasser himself had decided to embark on the patrol."

During the duration of the reservist duty near the northern border, no evaluations of the situation were made, no orderly transfer of orders was carried out, and when it came to patrols "they went out and during the ride, they decide where to go and where to stop," Almog noted.

The comrades of the two kidnapped soldiers rejected Almog's criticism.

"I don't know what he means by 'trip,' people sacrificed their lives and to call it a 'trip' is irresponsible," says Moshe Alaluf, a soldier in the company.

"Maybe Gal Hirsch goes out on a trip with body armor and bandolier," another one added sarcastically. Regarding Almog's comments that the soldiers were giddy, another soldier said: "These are soldiers that were due to be released home, after 12 days of duty, to their wives. What does he expect, that they would sound sad? What does this have to do with the incident?"

"Three hours before you are to go home, you cannot control it. Your alertness is at a different level. Especially when you know that there is no special threat alert," says Moti Maaravi.

"Goldwasser did not decide on his own to go on patrol. There was a permanent list on who goes and when. It wasn't like he gathered a few soldiers and off he went," said Dudu Lubratzky.

The soldiers also said that before every patrol, they had a briefing. They also insist that the lowering of the alert levels two days before the raid is what convinced Goldwasser that it was safe to drive close to the fence.

"The decision to go past that point may have been wrong, but it was very logical: It was the last day of reservist duty, during the daytime, the last patrol to check out the area, and this is a reasonable decision. The order that forbade passing near that point did not reach us," said a soldier in another company.

The soldiers stress the company arrived short of men, and they had to be on an "8-8" rotation (eight hours on duty, eight hours off). They had asked for reinforcements to man several other observations posts, but the soldiers say these did not arrive.