Jerusalem, 23 April-(ANA)-Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has met a top Egyptian envoy, Israeli officials said, signalling that bilateral ties strained by Lieberman's hawkish past comments could be on the mend.
Omar Suleiman, Cairo's intelligence chief and a key mediator with Palestinian Hamas Islamists controlling the Gaza Strip, invited Lieberman to visit Egypt during their 30 minutes of talks, an Israeli political source said.
No date was set.
Lieberman heads the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party and his appointment as Israel's top diplomat under a coalition pact with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was an affront to Egypt, the first Arab state to make peace with the Jewish state.
As a political newcomer, Lieberman suggested Egypt's Aswan Dam might be bombed should it fight another war with Israel.
He stirred controversy last year when, as an opposition lawmaker, he said Hosni Mubarak could "go to hell" if the Egyptian president did not visit Israel more often.
Mubarak has come once during 27 years of power, for the 1995 funeral of slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Israeli leaders regularly travel to Egypt. Netanyahu, who took power this month, is expected to go out soon as part of efforts to restart prisoner-exchange talks with Hamas, which has been holding an Israeli soldier captive for three years.
Egypt, like Israel, borders Gaza and has been involved in a blockade aimed at pressuring Hamas into softening its opposition to peace talks led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
It has also been trying to broker rapprochement between Hamas and Abbas's secular Fatah, which fought a brief civil war in 2007.(ANA)
UK/Houthis