Israeli officials believe the two soldiers are dead, but Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said he had not given Israel any indication of their fate. He called reports that they were dead "speculation . . . not based on anything tangible."

On Sunday, the day Israel's cabinet approved the swap, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he believed that Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, snatched in a July 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a war between Israel and Hezbollah, were dead.

Speaking to a Beirut news conference by video link yesterday, Nasrallah said the U.N.-brokered exchange would take place in mid-July.

All the Lebanese prisoners slated to be freed by Israel are alive. The longest-held prisoner, Samir Kantar, was serving multiple life terms for infiltrating northern Israel in 1979 and killing three Israelis - a man, his 4-year-old daughter, and a police officer.

Word of Kantar's inclusion stirred fierce emotions in Israel because of the grisly nature of his crime - witnesses said he crushed the little girl's skull - and his release could set a new standard for how far Israel is willing to go to repatriate its soldiers.

Kantar denies crushing the girl's skull, saying she was killed in the exchange of fire.

Nasrallah said he would provide a thorough report with information on missing airman Ron Arad, whose plane was shot down over Lebanon in 1986.

Israel will also receive the remains of some of its soldiers killed in the Lebanon war, and has agreed to release dozens of bodies and an undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners.

As part of the deal, Nasrallah said Israel would also give Lebanon information on the fate of four Iranian diplomats kidnapped in Beirut in 1982 at the height of the Lebanese civil war. Tehran says they were kidnapped by right-wing Lebanese Christian militiamen who delivered them to Israel.