-FO Spokesperson says no change in policy towards Israel
-Trade Secretary Faruqui confirms Pakistan did not send any export consignment to Israel
-American Jewish Congress had claimed that Pakistani shipment offloaded in Israel
By Our Diplomatic
Correspondent
ISLAMABAD: Amid reports of an exchange of goods between Pakistan and Israel, the Foreign Office (FO) and Ministry of Trade and Commerce denied on Sunday having made any trade with the middle-eastern nation.
The American Jewish Congress (AJC) had claimed that a bilateral trade occurred with the of-floading of the first shipment carrying Pakistani-originated food products in Israel.
Issuing a clarification over the purported trade, FO spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told Geo.tv that Pakistan does not have diplomatic or trade relations with Israel.
“There is no change in the policy,” she stressed.
Spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce said that the AJC’s press release was wrongly at-tributed as it does not make any mention of Pakistan’s official trade relations with Israel.
“Rumours about beginning of Pakistan-Israel trade are pure propaganda. We neither have nor do we intend to start trade relations with Israel,” the spokesperson said.
Earlier, Secretary of Commerce and Trade Sualeh Ahmad Faruqui had confirmed to The News that Pakistan did not send any export consignment to Israel, and any claims suggesting otherwise are merely disinformation for political purposes.
The customs officials at the Karachi Port also seconded the trade secretary’s statement. On March 30, the American Jewish Congress released a statement on “trade between the State of Israel and Pakistan” claiming that the first shipment from the country had been received in Israel.
“This week, the first shipment of Pakistan-origin food products was offloaded in Israel, in a transaction that involved Pakistani-Jewish businessman Fishel Benkhald, based in Pakistan’s business hub of Karachi, and three Israeli businessmen from Jerusalem and Haifa,” the state-ment read.
It also stated that the alleged trade was widely reported by both Pakistani and international me-dia.
The AJC had stated that the two nations didn’t have diplomatic ties yet but their entrepreneurs and technologists “have forged ahead in pursuit of common prosperity”.
“Thanks to this initiative [alleged first trade] eighteen years ago, constraints and licenses that restricted Israel-Pakistan trade were abolished,” it added.
