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Russia says could mediate in releasing abducted Israeli soldiers -1

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Russia is ready to mediate in securing the release of Israeli military personnel abducted by Islamist guerillas if Tel Aviv requests it, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday.
(Recasts headline, lead, adds quote from hostage relative, details in paras 2, 4-8)

JERUSALEM, June 27 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is ready to mediate in securing the release of Israeli military personnel abducted by Islamist guerillas if Tel Aviv requests it, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday.

Three Israeli servicemen are being held by radical Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon-based Islamist movement Hizbollah, who are demanding the release of thousands of Arab terrorist suspects being held in Israeli prisons, in exchange for the hostages.

In opening remarks at a meeting with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem, Lavrov said Russia was not party to talks on having the Israeli hostages freed, but it "is ready to send a serious political signal" to the abductors.

Earlier Wednesday, Lavrov met with the parents of Gilad Shalit, who was captured in June 2006 in a cross-border raid by Gaza-based Palestinian militants, and of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, kidnapped by Hizbollah loyalists the following month. They asked Russia to apply pressure on the abductors to free their sons.

"We are asking Russia to continue doing everything it can, to continue pressurizing Syria [believed to be backing Hizbollah] and [Hamas leader] Khaled Mashaal to have Udi, Eldad, and Gilad back home," said Karnit, Ehud Goldwasser's mother.

The abduction of Shalit, aged 20, sparked Israeli military operations and air strikes in the Gaza Strip. Shalit's safe return is seen as a precondition for peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Talks on his release were reported to have stalled over who, and in what numbers, should be freed from Israeli prisons.

Lavrov's visit comes amid mediators' reinvigorated efforts to make progress on peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians now that the Palestinian territories have undergone a power split into Gaza, controlled by Hamas, and the West Bank, controlled by President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah, which has received the international community's backing.

Israeli troops killed at least 10 Palestinians, mostly militants, and wounded 45 in a gunfight in eastern Gaza Wednesday morning.

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