President Barack Obama has so far made no decision to free US-born Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard to boost hopes of extending peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, the White House said Tuesday.
The Israelis have repeatedly asked Obama and previous US presidents to release Pollard, who is serving his sentence in North Carolina for passing US secrets on Arab and Pakistani weapons to Israel during the mid-1980s.
Pollard, who received a life sentence in 1987, is eligible for release from November next year.
Sources in Israel said a deal was emerging in talks between Secretary of State John Kerry and the Israeli government in which a group of Palestinian prisoners would be freed and peace talks would get a reprieve into 2015 in return for Pollard's release.
The White House indicated on Tuesday that no deal had yet been agreed, and refused to go into details of Kerry's talks.
"The president has not made a decision to free Jonathan Pollard," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
He did not, however, rule out a future decision to pardon Pollard or commute his sentence in a bid to save the apparently tottering US-brokered peace talks.
Separately, a spokesman for the US Justice Department said Pollard had waived his right to attend a meeting of a parole board that could have re-examined his ongoing detention.
"Pollard waived his hearing today, meaning he is no longer being considered for parole but is entitled to reapply for parole at any time," the spokesman told AFP.
The Justice Department did not say whether Pollard had given a reason for refusing to attend the hearing, but he has often in the past refused to engage with the parole process.
