Bardawil affirms consent to Clinton’s mediation in prisoner trade-off

[ 12/07/2010 - 04:34 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)--  Hamas leader and parliamentary bloc spokesman, Dr. Salah Al-Bardawil, confirmed in a press release on Sunday that Hamas has no opposition in using former U.S. President Bill Clinton as a mediator to achieve the prisoner trade-off, emphasizing that Hamas will not back down on its proposed conditions. Bardawil, in his statement, accused Israel of aborting previous mediation attempts to clinch the deal, reiterating that Hamas is willing to deal with any mediating party to pick up the negotiations where they were left off. He said that "in principle we do not have in Hamas any objection to the mediation of any party, whether Clinton or others, in the subject of prisoners, but it is important that the mediator has a degree of fairness between both parties. And we are not talking about any conditions, but talking about resuming negotiations from the point reached in the last understandings before Netanyahu spoiled them." Bardawil denied that Hamas would back down from its stance on the prisoner trade-off, saying, "Our cause is just, and we have thousands of prisoners in Israeli jails, and our demands are limited, but Israel blocked the deal by talking about names and places of release, they are trying to buy time ... As for Hamas’s position, it is the same position as the prisoners themselves who refuse to compromise, and prisoners’ families, and the [Hamas] movement’s principles. All of these were restrictions which prevented the Palestinian negotiator from giving up the requested price to complete the swap deal, and talks about any back-downs or surrender to Netanyahu’s terms are completely false.” Israeli sources said yesterday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked former U.S. President Bill Clinton to participate in efforts to release Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held in Gaza for four years.