Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that he believed the Israel Defense Forces soldier kidnapped by Hezbollah guerillas in July were still alive.

During a visit to the southern town of Kiryat Malachi on Tuesday, Olmert said he had been misunderstood the day before when he had said he would prefer captured soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser remain in captivity than for additional soldiers to be killed.

Olmert made the comment, which drew fire from the committee for the soldiers' return, on Monday at a meeting with 11th-graders from the Amal Nahariya high school. He also said Israel did not have solid evidence that the soldiers were alive.

	Advertisement

His comment was in response to a question about the cabinet's decision to end the war despite the fact that the kidnapped soldiers had not been released.

"What should we have done?" Olmert asked. "Keep fighting and maybe create dozens more bereaved families to accelerate the return of two people, and I hope they are still alive, for whom it's a question of spending a little more or a little less time in captivity in the face of the possibility or certainty that many dozens more would be killed in the continued fighting?"

The committee for the captured soldiers issued the following response: "We ask that the prime minister say less and do much more to bring about the release of the captives from Lebanon. The prime minister should be very careful with his words, so that