Foreign minister Jilani denies meeting with Israeli minister

Caretaker Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani has confirmed that Pakistani officials have not met Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen recently.

According to Geo News, he said Pakistan would consider the interests of both its own people and the Palestinians in deciding how to establish ties with Israel.

The Israeli minister had claimed a day earlier to have met officials from Muslim nations with which Israel does not have formal relations.

According to Cohen, six or seven Islamic nations will join the Abraham Accords once Saudi Arabia joins the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia and Israel voiced optimism that they were moving closer to a historic normalization of ties as Iran — their common foe — accused the kingdom of betraying the Palestinians through the US-led effort.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations on Friday that Israel is on the "cusp" of normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia and that Palestinians should not get to "veto" the move.

Addressing the General Assembly in New York, Netanyahu said agreements in 2020 to establish formal ties with three other Arab states had already "heralded the dawn of a new age of peace."

"But I believe that we are at the cusp of an even more dramatic breakthrough -- a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia."

US President Joe Biden is hoping to transform the Middle East — and score an election-year diplomatic victory — by securing recognition of the Jewish state by Saudi Arabia, the guardian of Islam’s two holiest sites.

Meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Biden quipped that he had “Irish optimism” on securing a deal with Saudi Arabia.

In 2020, Israel established relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Morocco, its first normalisations with the Arab world in decades after making peace with neighboring Egypt and Jordan.