Yemeni signals to initiate dialogue with Israel

The Israeli daily Maariv said on Tuesday that Yemen has recently sent signals to Israel expressing its desire to start a dialogue aimed at establishing diplomatic relations.

The Israeli paper added that figures close to the Yemeni authorities extended messages to this end to an Israeli minister.

The paper said the Israeli minister was told that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's "government, in the Yemeni view, is not a taboo."

The paper reported that Israel has recently intensified its efforts to establish diplomatic relations with Arab states like Algeria, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen and tried to improve its relations with Morocco and Tunisia, with which it exchanged liaison offices.

For his part, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Daniel Saada, stressed that the ministry is currently checking such news concerning Yemen.

Meanwhile, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdul Qader Bajmal defended, replying to a question asked by Orient Radio on Tuesday, Yemen's participation in the plenary meeting which was sponsored by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in New York and included representatives of several Arab states and Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy, in the framework of their participation in the meetings of the UN General Assembly, by saying that his country "opposes boycotting such meetings." He described the Yemeni position in this regard as not new.

Bajmal considered his country's participation in such meetings as positive and not negative and are for backing stances of Arab sides in the Middle East peace process and to support " our Syrian and Lebanese brothers."