Hezbollah today confirmed that a prisoner-swap with Israel should take place within two weeks, which will see the return of the bodies of the two Israeli soldiers whose kidnapping caused the 2006 Lebanon War.

Speaking at a press conference held by video link from Lebanon, Shiekh Hassan Nasrallah said that the Shia Islamist group had also agreed to supply Israel with information on the airman Ron Arad, who went missing in 1986.

The swap comes after months of work by German intermediaries to reach a deal allowing the return of the bodies of soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

They were captured by Hezbollah in a deadly cross-border raid on July 12, 2006, which sparked that summer's devastating 34-day war in Lebanon.

“I officially announce that the accord has been accepted from our part and the matter closed and we will respect the steps which are to be taken,” Shiekh Nasrallah, Hezbollah's spiritual leader, said.

"I will not set an exact date. The sooner it takes place the better. I believe that in a week or two it will be implemented... July 15 is the most probable, a bit before or a bit after. If I set a date the Israelis will only change it."

On Sunday, Israel’s Cabinet approved a deal under which it would release five Lebanese prisoners, including the remains of dead Hezbollah fighters and an undetermined number of Palestinians in exchange for the bodies of the soldiers. The summer war following the kidnapping of Goldwasser and Regev killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon and 160 in Israel.

Mr Nasrallah said that information on missing airman Ron Arad, as demanded by Israel, would also be passed on through the German mediators, but he declined to give details. Israel has insisted that if a deal were to go ahead it must be given information about the fate of the navigator whose aircraft was shot down over Lebanon in 1986 during the country’s civil war. He, too, is believed to be dead.

The deal has drawn some criticism in Israel, with Meir Dagan, the Mossad spy agency chief, voicing strong opposition during the Cabinet meeting that approved it.

A controversial part of the agreement is the release of Lebanese prisoner Samir Kantar, a militant serving a 542-year sentence for killing two men and a four-year-old girl in a 1979 raid on northern Israel. The brutality of that attack horrified Israelis.

On Monday, Israeli officials said the prisoner swap could go ahead in two weeks if Hezbollah provides a report on Mr Arad’s fate.

“It could take two weeks, if we obtain the information we requested on the fate of Ron Arad,” cabinet secretary Ovadia Yehezkel told army radio. The document given the green light by the Cabinet on Sunday states that Israel alone will decide how many Palestinians to release.

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