Hamas: Negotiations for prisoner deal continue

Beirut/Gaza City/Damascus - Senior Hamas officials on Tuesday said they would continue to discuss the details of a proposal for a prisoner exchange deal with Israel. "The negotiations are still ongoing and continuing," Osama Hamdan, the Hamas spokesman in Beirut, told the German Press Agency dpa.

He added that the movement remained in contact with the German negotiator shuttling between the Israeli government and Hamas officials.

A Hamas official in Damascus, speaking on condition of anonymity, likewise said the group's exiled political leaders in Damascus were in "continuous meetings" over a possible deal, which could see the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured in 2006.

"In every prisoner (exchange) deal there are always negotiations until the last minute and both sides have to give their views," Hamdan said, declining to comment on his movement's stand on the details of the proposal.

Hamdan and Mohammed al-Nasr, of Hamas' political bureau, both denied reports by al-Arabiya satellite channel that the Islamist movement's leadership in Syria had rejected key details of the swap proposal.

Al-Nasr, in a statement sent to reporters, said the movement's leadership was still considering the proposal.

Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza, was in Syria for meetings with the exiled leadership on the details of the deal, Hamas officials said.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/301399,hamas-negotiations-for-prisoner-deal-continue.html.