Mystery continues to hover over the whereabouts and fate of Capt. Ron Arad, an Israeli air force navigator shot down over Lebanon in 1986, who Israel hopes will be freed soon.
Officials involved in negotiating a prisoner swap said Sunday they had no information to support a statement by a Shi’ite Moslem leader in Beirut that the Israeli airman was in Syrian hands.
The statement, quoted by the British Sky Television network, was the second such unconfirmed report concerning Arad on British television since last week.
Arad is the only one of the original seven Israeli servicemen missing in Lebanon who is believed to be alive. Two others have been confirmed dead, and the body of a third was returned. The remaining three are presumed dead, though Israel has received no confirmation of this.
Officials here pointed out that Giandomenico Pico, the special emissary of U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, told the BBC over the weekend that he had no information about Arad.
The U.N. secretary-general, who has been brokering the release of Western hostages held by Islamic groups in Lebanon, has promised to seek information about the Israeli MIAs.
Hopes that Arad would be returned home soon were raised last week after the last three American hostages in Lebanon were freed. Joseph Cicippio, Alann Steen and Terry Anderson were set free following the Dec. 1 release of 25 Shiites from a detention facility in the southern Lebanon security zone, controlled by Israel’s allied South Lebanon Army.
SHEIK TO BE TRADED FOR ISRAELI
Israel still holds about 200 Shi’ites, including Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, a religious leader of the Shi’ite fundamentalist Hezbollah, with which the hostage-taking groups are affiliated.
Defense Minister Moshe Arens has made clear there is no chance Israel will release Obeid before Arad is returned.
Israel is also seeking confirmation of the fate of three Israel Defense Force soldiers captured during a tank battle at Sultan Ya’kub after the invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
The soldiers, Yehuda Katz, Zecharia Baumel and Zvi Feldman, are presumed dead. When that is confirmed, Israel is expected to demand the return of their bodies.
The Defense Ministry was questioned Sunday about a report in the Sunday Times of London that Syria recently sent Israel three coffins presumably containing the remains of IDF soldiers, but which turned out to be those of Syrian soldiers.
A spokesman for Defense Minister Moshe Arens said the Times report was not about recent events but concerned an occurence seven years ago.
At that time, Israel received five coffins from Syria, the spokesman said. Two contained remains identified as IDF navigator Aharon Katz and Capt. Zohar Lifschitz.
The other three contained the bodies of Syrians, he said.
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