THE wife of an Israeli soldier whose kidnapping triggered the Middle East conflict appealed for his return during a visit to London yesterday.

Karnit Goldwasser, 30, who was accompanied by two relatives, said that she hoped that her 24-hour stopover in Britain would help to free her husband, Ehud, from Hezbollah guerrillas.

Mr Goldwasser, 31, was abducted near the Israeli border with Lebanon on July 12 with another reservist, Elad Regev — the incident that sparked the present conflict.

Mrs Goldwasser conducted more than 30 interviews with British media yesterday, many of them overseen by the Israeli Embassy in London. The family’s trip was funded by a charity linked to their old university. Today they will move on to the United States.

The Israeli Government denied that it had paid. However, Mrs Goldwasser voiced concern that her visit could be seen as a propaganda tool.

Speaking with tears in her eyes, she told The Times that she had spent the 21 days since her husband’s abduction appealing to the media to highlight his plight.

“We have not rested for a single moment. Everything we are doing is trying to bring ‘Udi’ back home,” she said.

Mrs Goldwasser said that she was confident in her Government’s strategy and she distanced herself from those who say that the Israeli response has been disproportionate. “I know that Hezbollah planned and executed my husband’s kidnapping.” She added: “The killing could have been stopped on both sides. No one needs to hear of the death of her son or her husband. That is all I can say.”

She said that she also hoped to visit Arab countries at some point in the hope that they had closer contacts within Hezbollah. Like her husband she is studying environmental engineering at the Israeli Institute of Technology. She last spoke to him the night before he was abducted. It was the final day of a four-week tour and he was looking forward to going home to Haifa.

“We spoke, but he said, ‘I will save some things to tell you’. Twenty-one days later I am still waiting,” she said.

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