Israel Pm Suspends Hamas Ceasefire Negotiator

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has suspended the principal negotiator involved in trying to broker a ceasefire with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

Amos Gilad, a civil servant who heads the defence ministry's political bureau, has spent weeks traveling between Jerusalem and Cairo trying to negotiate an Egyptian-mediated truce and with it the release of an Israeli soldier captured near Gaza nearly three years ago.

The move comes after Gilad was quoted in an Israeli newspaper last week making unusually frank criticisms of the Israeli government's attitude to negotiating with Egypt and its apparent delays on agreeing a prisoner release that would see Hamas hand over the captured soldier, Gilad Shalit, who is believed to be still alive somewhere in Gaza.

Contacts with the Egyptians have been suspended, but were expected to restart. Officials said Gilad would be replaced and Israeli reports said Olmert's office had filed a complaint against him with the civil service commissioner for a "disciplinary violation".

"The straw that broke the camel's back was the public interview last week for Ma'ariv," one Israeli official told Reuters today. "It was totally unprofessional and unseemly for a civil servant to publicly attack his boss ... The prime minister's office will of course be continuing the contacts with the Egyptians. We expect those contacts to resume shortly."

Another negotiator, Ofer Dekel, had been primarily responsible for negotiating the release of the Israeli soldier and he is likely to continue in the job.

Gilad's outburst came after Olmert announced that a truce with Hamas in Gaza would be conditional on the release of the soldier, a decision that was approved by the Israeli cabinet last week. Israel's three-week war in Gaza last month ended with unilateral ceasefires on both sides, but militants continue to fire rockets into southern Israel and the Israeli military continues to launch strikes inside Gaza.

Gilad was quoted in the Ma'ariv newspaper as speaking to a "close associate", and later confirmed the quotes were his own words. "I don't understand what it is that they're trying to do. To insult the Egyptians? We've already insulted them. It's madness. It's simply madness. Egypt has remained almost our last ally here," he was quoted as saying.

He said the soldier Shalit would be freed quickly if Israel approved a list of names of prisoners to be released in return.

"Did they submit a list?" said Gilad. "Did they submit names? They're only busy insulting Egypt all the time. At first we submitted 70 names, and that's it. Since then, we've disappeared. Is that how they want to bring Gilad [back]? Because if they decide tomorrow to release the prisoners, that very same day we'll get Gilad."

The Israeli defence ministry supported Gilad as the row deepened and there appeared to be a widening split between Olmert and his defence minister, Ehud Barak. Olmert remains a caretaker prime minister who will step down in the coming weeks once the next government has been formed following elections earlier this month.