ISLAMABAD, 1 February 2005 — Pakistan yesterday ruled out the possibility of having direct diplomatic relations with Israel while the Palestinian issue remained unresolved.

“What needs to be done is to resolve the issues first. You have to have certain conditions where you can move toward such a decision (of establishing relations with Israel),” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan told reporters at weekly press briefing.

“In a broader sense, of course, we want the situation in the Middle East to be steered toward a resolution to bring down tensions,” Khan said.

Israeli politician Shimon Peres, in an interview with a leading Pakistani newspaper and television channel last week, called for “direct and personal contacts” between Pakistan and Israel.

The interview apparently triggered an attack on the offices of the organizations in Karachi late Friday in which the offices were ransacked and employees assaulted.

Khan also rejected the impression that there are any clandestine relations between the two countries.

Pakistan does not recognize Israel, considering it an “illegal Jewish occupation” of the land of Muslim Palestinians.

After a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart in the White House last December, US President George W. Bush said General Pervez Musharraf could play a “constructive and helpful” role in resolving the Palestine issue.

In another development, Pakistan said it was trying to prevent a future conflict in the region by helping to defuse tensions between Iran and the United States and its allies over Tehran’s nuclear program.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said Pakistan was a close friend of Iran, of the United States and of European countries that have been talking to the Iranians.

“What Pakistan is trying to do is to play a helpful role,” he said when asked if Pakistan had been acting as a mediator between Iran and the United States.

“We want to defuse the situation, we want to create an atmosphere, an enabling environment, where the dominant norm is talks,” he said, adding that the aim was to avoid exasperating tensions.

“Because war, conflict, in this part of the world is not the solution and that is why the leadership of Pakistan is making these efforts, strenuous efforts, to help defuse the situation, defuse the crisis, this gathering storm.”

The call came after US officials and diplomats said the United States had rebuffed pleas to join a European diplomatic drive to persuade Iran to give up any ambitions to add nuclear weapons to its arsenal.

The United States takes a harder line than the Europeans and wants Iran, which President Bush grouped in an “axis of evil” with pre-war Iraq and North Korea, to be reported to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.

Bush has said Washington would not rule out the use of force if Iran was not more forthcoming about its nuclear program.

Khan declined to specify what role Islamabad was playing.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is expected to visit Tehran in the third week of February. Khan said there were voices, even in the United States, urging Washington not to start another conflict in the region.

“I think everybody would agree that we must avert this conflict and Pakistan is making efforts in that direction.”

Last year, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, admitted selling nuclear secrets to Iran as well as to Libya and North Korea. But Iran denies US charges it is pursuing nuclear arms and says its programs are only for peaceful power generation needed to keep up with its growing population.

Shaukat Aziz to Propose Project

Deals With India: FT

In London, Pakistan will propose a series of confidence-boosting joint projects with India, which it hopes will pave the way to progress in ending difficulties such as the dispute over Kashmir, the Financial Times reported yesterday.

A gas pipeline to connect India with Iran via Pakistan and a move to open banking links were among possible measures which “would improve the atmospherics”, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told the FT in an interview.

The paper quoted Aziz as adding there were “many other possibilities which we want to explore”. Aziz would make the proposals to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a regional summit in Bangladesh next weekend.