JERUSALEM (AFP) — A prisoner exchange deal with Hezbollah could go ahead within two weeks providing Israel receives information on an airman who went missing in Lebanon in 1986, a government official said on Monday.

The Israeli cabinet on Sunday gave the green light to the deal under which the remains of two soldiers are to be handed over in exchange for five Lebanese "fighters" and an undetermined number of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

Officials made it clear the deal would go ahead after Israel receives from Hezbollah intelligence on Ron Arad, an air force navigator missing since he flew a mission over south Lebanon in 1986 during the country's civil war.

Hezbollah has said in the past Arad was believed to be dead but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his ministers on Sunday: "It has been over 20 years since Ron's disappearance -- we have no certain information about what happened to him at all."

Arad was captured by another Shiite movement, Amal, headed by Nabih Berri who is now speaker of the Lebanese parliament.

"It could take two weeks or even more, if we obtain the information we requested on the fate of Ron Arad," cabinet secretary Ovadia Yehezkel told army radio.

Under the agreement, Israel would release the five Lebanese and the remains of Hezbollah fighters in exchange for the bodies of Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

The Israelis were captured by Hezbollah fighters in a deadly cross-border raid on July 12, 2006 that sparked a devastating 34-day war in Lebanon.

After this part of the deal is over, Israel will decide within 30 days which Palestinian prisoners will be released, media said. The document approved by the cabinet on Sunday states that Israel alone will decide how many Palestinians will be released.

The deal has drawn some criticism in Israel, and Mossad spy agency chief Meir Dagan voiced strong opposition during Sunday's cabinet meeting.

A controversial part of the agreement is the release of Lebanese prisoner Samir Kantar, a member of the Palestine Liberation Front who is serving a 542-year sentence for killing two men and a four-year-old girl in a 1979 attack in northern Israel that shocked the nation.

Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said Israel had "a moral obligation" to bring back its servicemen.

"In these negotiations we have been forced to deal with Hezbollah, a cynical terrorist organisation that has no qualms about manipulating the pain of our servicemen families."

Olmert told the cabinet on Sunday the two soldiers were dead.

"As far as we know, they were killed during the kidnapping or died from their wounds soon after the incident," Olmert said.

Hezbollah hailed the deal as a victory for the Shiite militia.

"The world could not achieve the Israeli goal of recovering its soldiers without the resistance dictating its terms: the release of prisoners," Hezbollah executive council chief Hashem Safie Eddin said on Sunday.