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ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi said on Sunday that Pakistan had no intention of establishing any type of relations with Israel and that there was no truth in media reports that an Israeli aircraft had landed at Islamabad recently.
“Pakistan is not going to establish ties with Israel because we support the Palestinians,” the president said at the Islamabad International Airport before leaving for Turkey on a three-day official visit.
He said the people of Gaza were facing unprecedented atrocities at the hands of Israelis, similar to those being faced by Kashmiris at the hands of Indian forces.
The president termed the reports about landing of an Israeli aircraft in Islamabad “baseless” and “unfounded”.
Dr Shireen Mazari, the Minister for Human Rights, took to Twitter on Sunday morning, rejecting the reports.
“Interesting how Israeli media, with a plane fake news, managed to divert Pak media’s attention away from the imp security issue of the Netanyahu-Oman visit which has strategic implications for Pak if Israel gets a permanent foothold in Oman where US mly already has a presence,” she tweeted.
Avi Scharf, the editor of Israeli newspaper Haaretz’s English edition, sparked a controversy by claiming in a tweet on Thursday that a private Israeli business jet had flown to Islamabad from Tel Aviv recently and remained on the ground in the Pakistan capital for nearly 10 hours.
He claimed that the jet made a brief stopover in Amman on the way to Islamabad because of which it got a new call sign and became an Amman-Islamabad flight.
However, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) rejected the claim about a private jet from Tel Aviv visiting Islamabad and said there was no truth in any Israeli aircraft landing at any Pakistani airport.
Despite the government’s formal denial of the reports, opposition parties asked the government to give a convincing explanation on the matter.
Pakistan does not recognise Israel and, therefore, doesn’t have diplomatic relations with it. Therefore, the reports regarding landing of an Israeli aircraft at a Pakistani airport sparked a controversy.
The alleged mysterious trip occurred a day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the first visit to Oman by an Israeli premier in over 20 years.
That visit too was kept secret until Netanyahu uploaded a video of a meeting and reception in Amman on Twitter. Oman described Israel as an accepted Middle East state.
Important friend
President Alvi, who is visiting Turkey on the invitation of his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said he would hold bilateral talks on all important matters because Turkey was an important friend of Pakistan.
Mr Alvi will address the inaugural ceremony of the new international airport in Istanbul.
The president said Ankara was an important friend of Islamabad and had always supported it on all issues, including Kashmir dispute.
“The people of Turkey are our friends and brothers. We have been together since the Khilafat movement. I also appreciate Turkey’s struggle for democracy despite international conspiracies,” he said.
In view of the government’s ongoing austerity drive, the president travelled on a commercial flight. He set aside his protocol, waited in queues and went to the counter to get his luggage searched before going through the immigration process.
Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2018
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