An Israeli negotiator was in Europe on Monday to pick up a report compiled by Hizbullah on a long-missing Israeli airman, part of a prisoner swap deal between the two sides, defense officials in Jerusalem said.

Negotiator Ofer Dekel is to receive the report from a U.N.-appointed German official who mediated the deal. It is supposed to detail efforts Hizbullah made to find out what happened to airman Ron Arad after his plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986.

Arad was captured alive by Shiite militants and changed hands several times before disappearing without a trace two decades ago. There have been reports that Arad was transferred to Hizbullah and then to Iran, but no reliable evidence on his fate has ever surfaced.

In exchange for the report on Arad, Israel is to provide information on four Iranian diplomats who disappeared in Lebanon in 1982. Iran claims they were kidnapped by Lebanese Christian militiamen, who delivered them to Israeli troops. Israel has long denied holding them.

The exchange of reports is part of a wider deal in which Israel is to hand over to Hizbullah five Lebanese prisoners in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers. The soldiers' capture in a July 2006 cross-border raid touched off Israel's second war in Lebanon.

One of the Lebanese prisoners, Samir Qantar, has been held in an Israeli prison nearly 30 years for his role in a 1979 infiltration attack that Israelis perceive as one of the cruelest in their history.

Israel had hoped Qantar would be a bargaining chip to wrest information from Hizbullah about Arad's fate, but recently concluded that Hizbullah has no new information about the airman. Last week, the Israeli Cabinet voted to trade Qantar for the bodies of the Israeli servicemen, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

On Sunday, Israel TV showed video of tractors beginning the process of exhuming the bodies of Hizbullah fighters that also are to be handed over as part of the deal.

No firm timetable for carrying out the swap has been announced, but Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said it would take place in mid-July.(AP) (Photo shows Ron Arad)