U.N.'s Ban details Hezbollah letter on prisoner swap

By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday released details of a letter he received from Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah outlining his group's conditions for further prisoner deals with Israel. Last week the leader of the Lebanese guerrilla group made a rare public appearance in Beirut to welcome five Lebanese released from captivity in Israel after Hezbollah returned the bodies of two captured Israeli soldiers. Israel is also due to release Palestinian prisoners in the future as a gesture to the U.N. secretary-general. Nasrallah said he had written to Ban asking him to use his good offices. In a letter to the current president of the U.N. Security Council, Vietnamese Ambassador Le Lunong Minh, Ban said that Nasrallah "declared his readiness for participation in the... [read full story]