Manama: Kuwait has denied reports that its first deputy prime minister and foreign minister Shaikh Sabah Al Khalid attended a closed-door meeting in New York with Tzipi Livni, Israel’s justice minister and chief negotiator with the Palestinians.

“The reports are absolutely not true and lack credibility,” a spokesperson for the foreign ministry said in a statement to the Kuwait News Agency (Kuna) on Sunday.

“Kuwait has a steady and clear stance on contacts with Israel and it is committed to the Arab positions in this regard. Kuwait will be the last state to normalise relations with Israel,” the spokesperson added.

The ministry added that Shaikh Sabah held 15 meetings with the foreign ministers of Arab, Asian, African and Western countries on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. The meetings reviewed the latest developments in the region.

Reports, mainly in the Israeli media, said on Saturday that Livni last week attended a working dinner in New York with Arab foreign ministers and senior statesmen and discussed with them “ways to break the deadlock in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other pressing regional issues.”

According to the Israeli media, the working dinner, hosted by the International Peace Institute (IPI) in its Trygve Lie Centre for Peace, Security, and Development, was conducted in accordance with the Chatham House rule of non-attribution and that none of what was said could be quoted.

The meeting agenda included the US-led international coalition military offensive against the Daesh extremist group.

The Israeli media said that the dinner for around 20 people “included Tony Blair, the Quartet Representative for the Middle East Peace Process.” Livni was allegedly the only Israeli to participate in the gathering.

Livni, who served as foreign minister from 2006 to 2009 and was tasked with managing talks with the Palestinians over nine months from 2013 to 2014, was in New York last week officially to attend a formal event organised by former US president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.