JERUSALEM, Feb 14: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Saturday Israel would not agree to any truce with the Hamas movement without the release of an Israeli soldier seized by Palestinian militants in 2006.

“The position of the prime minister is that Israel won’t reach any arrangement on a truce before the release of Gilad Shalit,” Mr Olmert’s office said.Egypt has been struggling to mediate a lasting truce between the two sides since a massive three-week war in Gaza was halted by separate ceasefires on January 18 that have since been strained by tit-for-tat exchanges of fire.

One of the conditions put forth by Hamas is that all the crossings into the enclave be opened, bringing an end to the Israeli blockade imposed when the group seized Gaza in 2007. It has demanded that release of the soldier — captured by three militant groups in a cross-border raid — be negotiated as part of a separate prisoner exchange involving hundreds of people held in Israeli jails.

“There is no relationship between the two files,” Hamas government spokesman Taher Al Nunu told AFP, referring to the truce and Mr Shalit. He added that the negotiations would continue as certain issues had not yet been resolved.

Egyptian security chief Omar Suleiman has been leading separate negotiations with Israel and Hamas and has said efforts were under way to draw up a list of Palestinian prisoners that might be released in exchange for Mr Shalit.

While Hamas has demanded an end to the blockade, Israel has insisted that will happen only when Hamas releases the soldier.

Earlier on Saturday, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum accused Israel of “backtracking” on the talks by demanding an open-ended agreement and stepping up attacks on the group’s Gaza enclave.

“(Israel) has demanded a long-term, open-ended truce and not an 18-month truce as had been (previously) established,” he said.

The two sides have been struggling to reach a formal truce in the wake of the Israeli offensive launched in December that killed some 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis and left vast swathes of the impoverished territory in ruins.—AFP