Row over Israel-Turkey secret meeting

Manama/Occupied Jerusalem: Secret talks between Israel and Turkey to resolve a diplomatic crisis has provoked a major row between the Israeli foreign ministry and the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The dispute erupted late Wednesday after Turkish and Israeli media reported that Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had held secret talks in Belgium with Israeli Trade Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer.

The meeting in Switzerland was apparently held due to pressure from the Obama administration, sources in Israel said yesterday.

The White House prompted and co-ordinated the meeting between Israeli Industry, Trade, and Labour Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the source said, according to Israeli daily Haaretz.

But details of the meeting were kept from Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, with him apparently only hearing of the talks through the media.

"The foreign minister views as extremely serious the fact that this was done without notifying the foreign ministry," said a sharply worded statement released by Lieberman's office late Wednesday.

"This goes against all norms of government and does serious harm to the trust between the foreign minister and the prime minister."

Technical oversight

Netanyahu's office promptly issued a statement saying the fact that Lieberman had not been informed was a "technical" oversight but declined to comment further, in a move perceived as an attempt to calm the tensions between the two.

The fact that Lieberman had "learned about this through watching Channel 2 news" was perceived as a significant slight, an Israeli official said.

"Ben Eliezer has always been a one-man Turkish lobby — he is someone they trust, with whom they have had long-standing ties, so it makes sense," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Having another minister step in (to help out with the Turkish crisis) is one thing, but doing this without informing the foreign minister — that is really offensive," he said.

During their two-hour meeting, Davutoglu reportedly reiterated Turkey's demand that Israel apologise for its May 31 raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla that left nine Turkish activists dead, the daily said.

Lieberman yesterday rejected Netanyahu's bid to meet, though he denied speculations that his Yisrael Beiteinu party was planning to leave the coalition over the matter.

"The system of considerations here must be different… this is a big, strong and stable coalition… this is the time to think big and not just about what the headline will be in the newspaper on Friday."

The foreign minister said his response could not be considered an unwarranted "outburst", telling Israel Radio: "The Prime Minister's Bureau should have considered and dealt with this matter differently, or at the very least consulted [with me]".

"Suddenly we discover that the defence minister and other senior officials were in on the matter and that the whole process was co-ordinated with the US," he said. "When you heard all these details and every half an hour there are more details, it becomes completely unreasonable."

Lieberman's hard-line Yisrael Beiteinu party is the second largest in the government coalition, behind Netanyahu's Likud.

But the foreign minister's right-wing views have made him unpalatable to many of Israel's allies and he has often taken a back seat internationally, leaving high-level diplomacy to Netanyahu and Barak.

Following Israel's May 31 lethal raid, Ben Eliezer broke with other ministers in demanding an international inquiry into the incident.

— With inputs from AFP