Senior Israeli foreign ministry officials held talks over the weekend in London with counterparts from Afghanistan about providing economic assistance to Kabul, a newspaper reported on Monday.
According to the Maariv daily, foreign ministry director general Ron Prosor and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's bureau chief, Yaki Dayan, arrived in London for a series of routine talks with British officials, and held backroom meetings with senior Afghan diplomats who had been attending an aid summit.
The Israeli officials offered assistance to kick-start the Afghan economy, which has been devastated by a quarter of a century of conflict, the report added. Afghanistan was governed by the ultra-Islamist Taleban regime before its ouster in late 2001 by a US-led coalition.
President Hamid Karzai, who has led the central Asian republic since then, has previously expressed his desire to meet the now coma-stricken Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Israel has never had diplomatic relations with Afghanistan and enjoys ties with only a handful of Muslim countries such as Egypt and Turkey. But Israel's diplomatic relations with the Muslim world have shown some signs of an upturn since it pulled out of the Gaza Strip last September.
There was no confirmation of the report from the foreign ministry. Its spokesman Mark Regev however said that "Israel is toiling to improve its ties with the Muslim and Arab world.
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