MOSCOW. Oct 19 (Interfax) - Moscow believe that the agreement between Israel and the Hamas movement to swap captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit for hundreds of Palestinian detainees will contribute to general improvement of the situation in the region.
"Moscow welcomes the implementation of these agreements that we hailed earlier as a positive development. We consider the humanitarian dimension of this mutual gesture of goodwill to be important. We believe that this will contribute to a healthier situation in the region and better atmosphere in the Israeli-Palestinian relations," the Russian Foreign Ministry said on its website on Tuesday.
The current swap gives reasons to hope that, "the parties will manage to move forward in resolving other sensitive issues through a direct or brokered dialog," it said.
It was reported earlier that on Tuesday, October 18, the Israeli government and the Palestinian movement Hamas started implementing their agreement to exchange soldier Shalit for more than a 1,000 detained Palestinians.
Shalit was handed over to Israel at the border with the Gaza Strip and has already been reunited with his family. Simultaneously, the first group of 477 Palestinian detainees was released from Israeli prisons. Yet another 550 Palestinians are due to be released in December.