JERUSALEM (AFP) -- Israel could ask the United States to free a former U.S. Defense Department official jailed for spying for Israel in several months' time in return for freeing jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, Israeli military radio said.

Pollard, an American Jew and former analyst for the navy, is serving a life sentence for giving thousands of secret documents about U.S. spy activities in the Arab world to Israel between May 1984 and his arrest in November 1985.

Barghouti , the West Bank Fatah leader who is regarded as the inspiration behind the Palestinian intifada, was handed five life terms for murder by an Israeli court on June 6.

The court ruled he was directly responsible for anti-Israeli attacks in which five people were killed. A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry declined to confirm the report saying he "had no knowledge of such a proposal," which he described as "surprising."

The radio based its report on an unidentified Israeli official who it quoted as saying "the proposal has chances of being accepted, given the growing anarchy within the Palestinian authority and the possibility that Barghouti would act as a counterweight to Hamas".

Just before his arrest, Pollard had tried to seek refuge at the Israeli embassy in Washington, and his arrest caused a diplomatic crisis between the United States and Israel.