The head of a prominent American Jewish group said that his recent meeting with Pakistan’s Muslim president was a positive sign as Jews and Muslims work to mend fragile relations. Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Jewish Congress-Council of World Jewry, met Thursday in Islamabad with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. It was their fifth meeting in the last year and a half, Rosen said Monday.

Rosen said Musharraf told him that “moderate Muslim nations have probably been weakened to some extent” because of the Israeli war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. But the meeting with Musharraf, Rosen said, “continues to show that moderate Muslim leaders like (Musharraf) want to continue the outreach to people of other faiths.”

The 34-day war was launched on July 12 hours after Hezbollah guerrillas killed three Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two others in a cross-border raid.

Islamic Pakistan, which has no diplomatic ties with Israel, has long demanded that the Jewish state end its occupation of Palestinian territory and that the Palestinian state should emerge on the world map with Jerusalem as its capital.

Last September, Pakistan’s foreign minister met with his Israeli counterpart for the first time in Turkey, a diplomatic breakthrough that both sides at the time said was the result of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Rosen said that he did not think the “Pakistani desire to find an avenue or a process to begin to have a dialogue (with Israel) has stopped. I didn’t get that impression. But I think realistically the process is stymied for the moment.”

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