JERUSALEM, 20 September 2005 — Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told an Israeli newspaper yesterday Israel and Pakistan should hold further discussions on forging diplomatic relations.
Musharraf, who shook hands with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the United Nations last week in what marked the first such encounter between leaders of both countries, made his comments to the English-language Jerusalem Post daily.
“We need to sit down and talk more (with the Israelis) and see how to move forward,” he told the newspaper, before a groundbreaking meeting with US Jewish leaders in New York on Saturday. “We ought to be taking more steps.”
Pakistan had been one of Israel’s harshest critics in the Muslim world. But relations began to improve after Israel’s pullout from Gaza, completed last week, which has brought signs of a thaw in Israel’s relations with the Arab and Muslim world.
Pakistan’s foreign minister met his Israeli counterpart in Turkey last month, marking the first public talks between the largely Muslim country and the Jewish state.
Musharraf has said that official ties with Israel could not come until the creation of a Palestinian state. He told US Jewish leaders on Saturday that granting the Palestinians statehood would also help stop terrorism.
Israel has full diplomatic ties with four major Islamic nations — Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Mauritania. Egypt and Jordan have returned their ambassadors to Israel since a February cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was due to meet his Tunisian counterpart yesterday in New York, an Israeli spokesman said.
