French source denies Peres statements

A French source denied in a statement to the Kuwaiti daily al-Rai al-Am denied what was stated by the Israeli regional cooperation minister Shemon Peres that the French President Jacques Chirac has interfered at the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Iranians to release the four Israeli soldiers held recently by Hizbullah party.

The source told the paper that Chirac's telephone call with President al-Assad was made a time ago, but the contacts with the Iranians and Hizbullah were limited to the diplomatic level and were made directly through the two French ambassadors in Beirut and Tehran.

The source attributed Peres's statement following his meeting with the French President in Paris on Monday to that the Israeli minister has no complete command on the details of the French language. A matter which made him did not understand the reality of what Chirac had said about these contacts, noting that this language was used during the talks between the two sides.

For its part, other French sources stressed, simultaneously, that Paris is working since a time to find out a solution for the question of the Israeli prisoners coincided with solving the question of the lebanese prisoners in the Israeli jails, despite the French diplomatic correction to this issue.