Cairo, Sept 26 (ZEENEWS.COM) Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas has said that he would demand Israel to free two jailed Palestinian leaders in return for a captured soldier.

Abbas told Egypt's Mehouar satellite television yesterday that he would seek the freeing of Marwan Barghuti and Ahmed Saadat in talks led by Egypt.

"When discussions will take place on ... The people we want freed, among them will be Barghuti and Saadat," he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Friday that he was prepared to negotiate a prisoner release with Abbas in exchange for a captured soldier.

Corporal Gilad Shalit was seized on June 25 in a cross-border raid by Gaza militants in an operation claimed jointly by the armed wing of the governing Islamist movement Hamas and two other hardline groups.

Barghuti, the West Bank Fatah leader and the man regarded as the inspiration behind the Palestinian Intifada, was handed five life terms for murder by an Israeli court in June 2004.

Israel blames Saadat for the murder of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi. He has been held in the Jericho prison under US and British supervision since August 2002 after his popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine faction claimed the 2001 killing.