(Recasts with Gemayel's denial, adds quotes, changes dateline) BEIRUT, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel on Friday denied telling an Israeli newspaper that two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerrillas in July are still alive, saying he had no information about their condition. Gemayel's office, who said he was participating in a conference in Madrid, issued a statement saying Gemayel "denies completely" speaking to any Israeli media about any issue. Earlier, Israel's Maariv newspaper quoted Gemayel and a second Lebanese politician in interviews as saying the two soldiers were alive but they offered no other details. They said they hoped the soldiers would return home in good health. "With regards to the matter of the fate of the two captive Israeli soldiers, President Gemayel does not possess any information about this matter and he is in no capacity to speak about it," a statement from his office said. Maariv's report appeared to run counter to an internal Israeli probe which concluded that the two soldiers -- Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev -- were seriously wounded during their capture and at least one of them could now be dead. Goldwasser and Regev were captured in a cross-border Hezbollah raid which triggered a 34-day war in which 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed. Hezbollah has ignored a U.N. call for the immediate release of the soldiers and said Israel must first free Lebanese prisoners and possibly others held in its jails. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that there would be no trade on Hezbollah's terms if it did not prove Goldwasser and Regev were still alive. Israel's Maariv and Yedioth Ahronoth newspapers said Gemayel spoke to them on the sidelines of the Madrid conference on stalled Middle East peacemaking. Yedioth quoted Gemayel as saying that he hoped a peace deal between Israel and Lebanon would be possible in the future. "Peace with Israel? I wish. I hope. But this is not the time from our point of view or from your point of view," he said. Miki Goldwasser, mother of captured soldier Goldwasser, told reporters at rally in the Israeli town of Zarit near the Lebanese border on Gemayel's reported comments: "It is nice to hear, but I am not satisfied because I need to see proof either a video, a letter -- or some representative (material) that he went and saw them and he can come to me and tell me that he saw him with his own eyes."
