Israel held its first public talks with Pakistan yersterday and Jordan’s king was expected to visit the Jewish state soon in signs of a thaw with the Muslim world after its evacuation of Jewish settlers from Gaza. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and his Pakistani counterpart Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri met in Istanbul for the first high-level contacts between their two countries despite their lack of diplomatic ties.

It was unclear whether the meeting was a prelude to establishing formal relations. Israel, though a staunch ally of the United States, has been frozen out diplomatically by much of the Muslim and Arab world.

Israel has full diplomatic ties with three Muslim countries – Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania, and limited interest or trade missions with Morocco, Tunisia and Qatar. Largely Muslim Pakistan has been a staunch supporter of demands for a Palestinian state and an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, home to 3.8 million Palestinians.

But Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper said the decisive factor in Pakistan’s decision to engage was the Jewish state’s dismantling of settlements in the Gaza Strip last month after 38 years of occupation. “Israel would like to improve its relationship with Pakistan. There is no conflict between Israel and Pakistan and no reason why the two countries cannot enjoy a positive and cooperative relationship”, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.

Diplomats say the two countries have held some informal contacts in recent months. Predominantly Muslim but secular Turkey has warm ties with both Israel and Pakistan and has been trying to act as a bridge between the two countries, an Israeli diplomatic source said. Dawn said Pakistan had told the Turkish government it wished to arrange the meeting in Turkey as a neutral site.

The meeting also comes ahead of President Pervez Musharraf’s plans to address leaders of the Jewish community in the United States at an interfaith meeting organised by the Council for World Jewry, during his visit to New York later this month to attend the UN General Assembly. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will also attend the U.N. gathering.

An Israeli diplomatic source said Jordan’s King Abdullah would visit Israel as early as next week for talks with Sharon. The source said the meeting could possibly take place in Jerusalem but that the venue was still being finalised. There was no immediate comment from Jordan, one of only two Arab states that has signed a peace treaty with Israel.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said it could not confirm the meeting but that Israel would welcome such a visit. “In Israel, King Abdullah enjoys prestige and respect and any such visit could be used both to forward the bilateral relationship between Israel and Jordan and to energise the Middle East peace process”, Regev said.

The Israeli daily Maariv also said preliminary talks were being held for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to visit Israel, which would be his first since the funeral of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Maariv, citing senior government sources, said that unless there is a last-minute hitch Abdullah would visit next week or the week after.

Relations between Jordan and Israel have often been chilly during a nearly five year-old Palestinian uprising. But Abdullah helped promote a U.S.-sponsored peace “road map” launched at a summit in Aqaba in 2003 and has also backed Sharon’s “disengagement”plan for the first removal of settlements from land the Palestinians want for a state. “Abdullah’s visit ... is to show support for disengagement”, the diplomatic source said.

Abdullah last visited Israel in March 2004, when he met Sharon secretly at his ranch in the Negev desert. His father, the late King Hussein, visited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem in 1997.

<B>Matt SPETALNICK</B>