The Israeli Foreign Ministry is denying a British newspaper report that Israeli Cabinet ministers have met secretly with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Azziz in an effort to draw up a peace treaty between the two nations.
The report of the meeting, which appeared in The Sunday Times of London, was “without any basis and without any substance,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry stated in a one-sentence printed response to reporters’ questions on Sunday.
The ministry linked the report to “several reports, repeated recently” of purported Israeli contacts with Iraq.
The Sunday Times’ story stated that either or both of Israel’s two Iraqi-born ministers– Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, minister of housing, and Moshe Shahal, minister of police — had headed an Israeli delegation that met with Azziz last month in Rabat, Morocco.
According to local media reports, Shahal and Ben-Eliezer have comprised something of a pro-Iraq lobby within the Cabinet, advocating a thaw in relations between the two countries.
Quoting sources in Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency, The Sunday Times reported that Aziz had told the Israeli delegation in Rabat that Iraq would consider recognizing Kuwait’s borders if Israel would pressure the United States into lifting sanctions imposed on Iraq.
The U.S.-imposed sanctions followed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.
The Sunday Times said Iraq had launched a peace initiative with Israel in the wake of last September’s signing in Washington of the Declaration of Principles on Palestinian self-rule.
In recent weeks there have been several reports here and abroad of behind-the-scenes contacts between Baghdad and Jerusalem — all of which have been flatly denied by the government.
The only contact from Iraq that Israeli government officials have confirmed was a recent overture from the Iraqi ambassador to the U.N. to the Israeli envoy, Gad Ya’acobi, reportedly requesting information on Israel’s ongoing peace moves with its neighbors.
Government officials said Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had ordered Ya’acobi to ignore such overtures in concert with the U.S. policy of boycotting Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein’s regime.
On Sunday, knowledgeable non-official sources in Israel suggested that The Sunday Times report may well have been an elaboration of earlier, speculative stories.
Some of these sources further suggested that the British sources behind the Times account might be interested in propagating this material in order to stir up discord between the United States and Israel.
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