Jerusalem - Reports of a breakthrough in negotiations to free an Israeli soldier held captive in the Gaza Strip for the past three years are "damaging," Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday. "The reports on the release of (Gilad) Shalit are incorrect and even damaging," Barak said at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, according to Israeli media reports.
"The less we talk and the more we focus on action, the better," he added.
According to reports in the international media over the past few days, Shalit is to be transferred to Egypt shortly, as part of a prisoner swap deal with Hamas, which is holding him somewhere in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials have denied the reports, and Hamas officials have said the sides are still far apart in their negotiations.
On Sunday, Israel's Ha'aretz daily quoted "senior Israeli political sources" as saying that "there is no substantive progress on the matter."
Shalit was snatched during a cross-border raid by Hamas' military wing and two other militant groups launched from the Gaza Strip on June 25, 2006.
Hamas is demanding the release of hundreds of Palestinians from Israeli jails in exchange for Shalit. The Egyptian-mediated negotiations have not yet borne fruit.
Barak meanwhile refused to confirm a report which appeared in the Israel Yediot Aharanot mass-circulation daily which said he was about to promise Washington that Israel would undertake a three-month freeze on all settlement activity, including construction for so- called "natural growth" or population expansion.
Barak is set to depart for the US for talks with administration officials, including George Mitchell, the US envoy to the Middle East.
A meeting between Mitchell and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, originally scheduled for Thursday last week, was cancelled amid an ongoing dispute between Washington and Jerusalem over Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.
While the Obama administration has demanded Israel halt all settlement activity, Netanyahu has said the Jewish state will build no new settlements, nor expropriate any land for new ones, but that construction for "natural growth" will be allowed to proceed.
