Shalit talks may pick up where Olmert left off

Negotiations on a deal for the return of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit will pick up speed in the coming days, with talks resuming where they were left off during the Olmert administration, Egyptian sources said.

Under former prime minister Ehud Olmert, Israel had agreed to free 325 of the 450 serious offenders whom Hamas had demanded by name in exchange for Shalit, but on condition that 144 of them be deported from the territories.

The talks broke off in the waning days of the Olmert government.

Israel had also agreed to release almost 1,000 additional prisoners sentenced to shorter terms, including women and teenagers, in several stages.

Sources involved in the negotiations under Olmert said that Hamas had agreed to some deportations, but not as many as Israel wanted. Moreover, the Islamist group continued to insist that all 450 prisoners on its list be freed.

Olmert, in a speech in March, said his final offer was a "red line" beyond which Israel could not pass. However, both Hamas and the Egyptian mediators are apparently expecting Benjamin Netanyahu's government to make further concessions.

While Hamas has barely budged from its initial demands over the last three years, Israel has repeatedly sweetened its offers.

But Israeli government sources said it did not seem likely that the new talks would immediately deal with Hamas' list of names, since the ministerial committee on prisoner releases has yet to formulate its position on the issue.

The committee is debating whether to even resume the talks from where they left off under Olmert, or whether to start over from scratch.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who met President Shimon Peres in Cairo yesterday, told Peres that Shalit is apparently healthy, and that he hopes a deal will be reached soon.

But defense officials warned against exaggerated expectations of a swift resolution, given the complexity of the issue.

Hagai Hadas, who took over from Ofer Dekel as chief negotiator on the Shalit case a month ago, has yet to visit Cairo, but he has assembled a team of experts to advise him on the talks and studied all the information gathered by the defense establishment on the issue.

Mubarak urges settlement freeze

Mubarak, speaking at a joint press conference with Peres after their meeting, also said that Israel must freeze settlement construction and reach a final-status agreement with the Palestinians on the basis of the Arab peace initiative.

Asked whether he thought Netanyahu's government could meet his demands, given the prime minister's stated opposition to a settlement freeze and his demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, Mubarak responded: "All these statements are a kind of tactic, or [test] balloons for the media. The real positions will be determined when the sides sit face to face at the negotiating table."

Peres briefed Mubarak on the steps the government has already taken to ease Palestinian life in the West Bank, such as the removal of roadblocks and the advancement of joint economic projects, as well as on other steps it is planning to take in the future.

The two men also discussed Egypt's efforts to halt arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip from the Sinai Peninsula and its attempt to foster reconciliation between the rival Palestinian factions of Hamas and Fatah.

Peres also met with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who has been the chief mediator between Israel and Hamas in the Shalit talks.