This request was one of a number passed by Ofer Dekel, Israel's negotiator in charge of prisoner exchanges, to UN-appointed German mediator, Gerhard Konrad, during their meeting in Europe last Thursday.

Hezbollah abducted Israel Defense Forces soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser in a cross-border raid in July 2006 that triggered the 34-day Second Lebanon War.
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Dekel also passed on a list of questions and demands for Hezbollah regarding the group's report about missing Israel Air Force navigator Ron Arad. Hezbollah has until now only provided Konrad with an outline of the report.

The prisoner exchange will get under way only after Hezbollah deals with Israel's requests and under the condition that Israel finds the militant group's response satisfactory.

The swap will comprise several steps: Both sides will sign the agreement, after which there will be an exchange of reports. Hezbollah's report on Arad is expected to say that the group did not manage to locate Arad, who was shot down near Sidon in 1986, but will detail its activities and conclude that the navigator died in Lebanon more than a decade ago.

In return for the report on Arad, Dekel will hand the German negotiators a report to Hezbollah and probably also to Iran focusing on the fate of four Iranian diplomats who disappeared in Lebanon in July 1982.

Meanwhile, Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's deputy secretary general, on Sunday met with the families of the four missing Iranian diplomats. Qassem told them that Israel kidnapped the four, a claim that has in the past been made by Iran. He also updated the families on Hezbollah's efforts to gather information on the diplomats' whereabouts and told them a clearer picture of their fate would soon emerge.

The final phase of the exchange would see Hezbollah return captured soldiers Regev and Goldwasser, believed to be dead, for five Lebanese prisoners and the remains of around 200 Lebanese, Palestinian and Arab infiltrators to northern Israel.