AL QUDS, Sept 19: Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf told an Israeli newspaper on Monday that Israel and Pakistan should hold further discussions on forging diplomatic relations.

Gen Musharraf, who shook hands with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the United Nations last week in what marked the first such encounter between leaders of both countries, made his comments to the English-language Jerusalem Post daily.

“We need to sit down and talk more (with the Israelis) and see how to move forward,” he told the newspaper, before a ground-breaking meeting with US Jewish leaders in New York on Saturday. “We ought to be taking more steps.”

Pakistan’s foreign minister met his Israeli counterpart in Turkey last month, marking the first public talks between the Muslim country and the Jewish state.

Musharraf has said that official ties with Israel could not come until the creation of a Palestinian state.

He told US Jewish leaders on Saturday that granting the Palestinians statehood would also help stop Islamic terrorism.

Israel has full diplomatic ties with four Islamic nations — Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Mauritania. Egypt and Jordan have returned their ambassadors to Israel since a February ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians.—Reuters