WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Negotiations in Cairo to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and a hostage deal are still pressing ahead, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said, adding that the discussions will continue on the working-group level for the next few days to iron out specific issues.
Speaking to reporters in a virtual briefing, Kirby pushed back on suggestions that the talks have broken down, and said, on the contrary, that they were “constructive”.
“The talks actually progressed to a point where they felt like the next logical step was to have working groups at lower levels to sit down to hammer out these finer details,” Kirby said.
Brett McGurk, U.S. President Joe Biden’s top Middle East aide at the White House who has been participating in the talks, will soon leave Cairo after staying an extra day to start the working-group talks, Kirby said.
One of the issues to be tackled by the working groups will be the exchange of hostages Hamas is holding and Palestinian prisoners that Israel is holding, Kirby said.
He said the details to be settled included how many hostages may be exchanged, their identities, and the pace of their potential release.
Months of on-off talks have failed to produce an agreement to end Israel’s military campaign in Gaza or free the remaining hostages seized by Hamas in the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war.
The latest round of negotiations came under the threat of a regional escalation. Over the weekend, Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel as Israel’s military said it struck Lebanon with around 100 jets to thwart a larger attack.
But Kirby said the cross-border warfare over the weekend has not had an impact on the talks.
Key sticking points in ongoing talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar include an Israeli presence in the so-called Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow 14.5-km-long (9-mile-long) stretch of land along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
“There continues to be progress and our team on the ground continues to describe the talks as constructive,” Kirby said.
Two Egyptian sources on Sunday said Israel expressed reservations about several of the Palestinian detainees Hamas is demanding be released, and Israel demanded their exit of Gaza if they are released.
More than 40,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Most of its 2.3 million people have been displaced multiple times and face acute shortages of food and medicine, humanitarian agencies say.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason, Humeyra Pamuk and Katharine Jackson; Editing by Chris Reese and Rod Nickel)
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