The U.N. secretary-general said Hezbollah is prepared to act on the remaining Israeli MIAs.
Ban Ki-moon said that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah had informed him of “his readiness for participation in the remaining humanitarian cases of Israeli MIAs,” Reuters reported. Ban added that Nasrallah was “conditioning his positive attitude to the nature and extent of Israeli humanitarian moves on behalf of Palestinian and Arab victims.”
Ban made the disclosure Tuesday in a letter to the current president of the U.N. Security Council, Vietnamese Ambassador Le Luong Minh.
Seven Israeli soldiers are listed as missing in action, according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Four of those were lost during military operations in South Lebanon, an area Hezbollah controls.
According to Ban, Nasrallah said that “hundreds” of cases involving minors, women and the elderly held in “detention” needed to be resolved immediately if Hezbollah was to cooperate in future humanitarian cases.
On Monday, Ban told a Jewish gathering that he was pleased with last week’s prisoner swap between Israel and Hezbollah, in which the bodies of two dead reservists were traded for five prisoners and the remains of 199 Arab fighters.
“I look forward to more positive moves,” Ban said.
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