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Occupied Jerusalem: An Israeli negotiator was in Europe on Monday to pick up a report compiled by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters on a long-missing Israeli airman, part of a prisoner swap deal between the two sides, defence officials said.
Negotiator Ofer Dekel is to receive the report from a UN-appointed German official who mediated the deal.
It is supposed to detail efforts the Iranian-backed Hezbollah made to find out what happened to airman Ron Arad after his plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986.
Arad was captured alive by Shiite fighters, and changed hands several times before disappearing without a trace two decades ago.
There have been reports that Arad was transferred to Hezbollah and then to Iran, but no reliable evidence of his fate has ever surfaced.
In exchange for the report on Arad, Israel is to provide information on four Iranian diplomats who disappeared in Lebanon in 1982.
Iran claims they were kidnapped by Lebanese militiamen allied with Israel, who delivered them to Israeli troops. Israel has long denied holding them, and Samir Geagea, former head of the disbanded Lebanese Forces, has said militiamen killed them.
The exchange of reports is part of a wider deal in which Israel is to hand over to Hezbollah four Lebanese prisoners in exchange for two soldiers Israel believes is dead.
The soldiers' capture in a July 2006 cross-border raid touched off Israel's second war in Lebanon.
On Sunday, Israel TV showed video of tractors beginning the process of exhuming the bodies of Hezbollah fighters that also are to be handed over as part of the deal.
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