Israel’s Foreign Ministry says its chief diplomat attended an international climate summit in Abu Dhabi.

The ministry confirmed Monday that Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz visited the United Arab Emirates and met with a senior UAE official and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the sidelines of the conference.

Israel and the UAE do not have formal diplomatic relations, but the two have developed increasingly close ties over shared concerns about Iran.

Katz says in a statement he was representing “the interests of the state of Israel before the Gulf Arab states.”

Visits by senior Israeli officials to Gulf states are rare, but growing in frequency. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Oman last year, but Katz’s visit was the first to the Gulf since last week’s Mideast peace conference in Bahrain.

(AP)