DUBAI (Reuters) - Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in remarks aired on Tuesday his group would only release the two Israeli soldiers it kidnapped if Israel freed Samir al-Qantar, a Lebanese prisoner held by the Jewish state since 1979.

."After all that happened and this ends without Samir?" Nasrallah told Al Jazeera television in an interview. Nasrallah stopped short of saying the group would not set the release of other prisoners as part of its conditions.

"There are other prisoners," the interviewer said.

"You ask me, will there be a deal without Samir, I say no ... Absolutely not," Nasrallah answered.

Israel's foreign ministry had no immediate comment.

Nasrallah said he expected a U.N. "mediator" to visit Lebanon next week to try to secure a deal for the release of the two Israeli soldiers the group kidnapped in July.

"He was supposed to come late last week and he is expected to come next week, but negotiations have not yet started."

Nasrallah said the envoy is European but did not give more details.

The kidnapping of the two soldiers triggered a 34-day war between Israel and the guerrilla group.

The Iran-backed group has declared at the outset of the war the goal was to exchange the soldiers for Lebanese and Palestinians detained in Israel.

Qantar, 44, is the longest-held Lebanese detainee. He was captured during a 1979 attack on northern Israel by a Palestinian guerrilla group in which an Israeli policeman, another man and his four-year-old daughter were killed.

In 2004, Hizbollah and Israel exchanged the bodies of three Israeli soldiers captured in 2000 and a kidnapped Israeli businessman for 400 Palestinian and 23 Lebanese and Arab prisoners in a German-brokered deal.

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