Israel, Germany hold 1st strategic Nat´l security talks

National security representatives from Israel and Germany held "historic" strategic talks for the first time in Jerusalem on Friday, reported dpa.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said this. Representatives of both the German and Israeli foreign ministries and national security advisers took part in the meeting, as did the director-general of the Israeli Ministry of Defence, the head of the intelligence agency Mossad, the director of the Israeli Security Agency and their German counterparts.

The new avenue of communication was discussed when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Israel in March "to establish a framework for a strategic dialogue between Germany and Israel that will take the two nations' cooperation to new heights."

"The participants discussed a wide range of issues related to national security. The Israeli participants presented the danger posed in Israel’s view by a return to the nuclear agreement with Iran. The two sides agreed to continue to hold this dialogue on a regular basis," the statement from Lapid's office said.

Scholz agreed back in March to biannual discussions with Naftali Bennett, who was the Israeli prime minister at the time.

Separately, Amir Eschel, director general of the Israeli Defence Ministry, met German Defence Ministry State Secretary Benedikt Zimmer in Jerusalem "as part of the intensifying defence dialogue between the defence ministries of the two countries."

At that meeting the head of the Israeli ministry's research and development (R&D) department also discussed future bilateral R&D cooperation.