MIDDLE EAST: Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert says there will be no negotiation with the Palestinian militants who kidnapped an Israeli soldier and are holding him in Gaza. The Israeli leader's remarks came just hours after the soldier's captors began making their demands known.
With thousands of Israeli troops and long lines of armoured vehicles massing on the Gaza border, Mr Olmert warned that time was "running out" and threatened a sweeping military response if the soldier, Cpl Gilead Shalit (19) was not freed.
However, Israeli officials, fearing that a military operation in Gaza could threaten Cpl Shalit's life, were still feverishly working through diplomatic channels yesterday in the hope that international pressure and the threat of military action would win his release.
The Hamas military wing, along with two other smaller armed groups, which carried out Monday's attack on an Israeli army post next to the Gaza border, released a pamphlet yesterday demanding the release of all Palestinian women and children under 18 in Israeli jails in exchange for information on the kidnapped soldier. There are 95 Palestinian women and 313 Palestinians under 18 in Israeli prisons.
Cpl Shalit was captured when militants tunnelled their way into Israel and opened fire in a pre-dawn raid on Monday on an army post. It was the first infiltration by militants from Gaza since Israeli withdrew its military and 7,000 Jewish settlers from the strip last year.
"The question of releasing prisoners is absolutely not on the agenda of the government of Israel," Mr Olmert said at a meeting of Jewish leaders in Jerusalem last night. He also warned that an "broad, fierce and harsh Israeli response" was near.
"We will not allow ourselves to become the object of Hamas terrorist blackmail."
Israel, he added, would hunt down "every terrorist and every terrorist organisation . . . even in far away places" - an apparent reference to Khaled Meshal, a leading Hamas figure in Damascus whom Israel believes gave the green light for Monday's raid.
French diplomats entered the fray yesterday after it emerged that the abducted soldier had dual Israeli and French citizenship.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas was also trying to track down Cpl Shalit's location with the help of mediators from Egypt, which has been active from the start in trying to defuse the growing stand-off.
Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government, confirmed that Cpl Shalit was alive and called on his captors to "keep him alive. We are interested in ending this matter quickly."
But the fact that the statement demanding the release of prisoners was signed by the military wing of Hamas has exposed apparent divisions within the Islamic movement, which swept to power in parliamentary elections in January.
Israeli intelligence officials told parliament yesterday that more moderate elements in Hamas, including prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, wanted to end the affair as quickly as possible.
However, pressure on those holding Cpl Shalit not to release him also began to mount yesterday, with Palestinian security prisoners - there are some 8,000 in Israeli jails - saying he should only be freed if Israel released prisoners in exchange.
In Washington, state department spokesman Sean McCormack said secretary of state Condoleezza Rice had spoken over the weekend to both Mr Abbas and the Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni to try to secure the release of the soldier.
"Bottom line, we call upon this individual to be released immediately," Mr McCormack told reporters.
"What we would urge is that all sides exercise restraint and avoid steps which further escalate the situation," he added.