Pakistan prime minister interviewed on contact with Israel, domestic politics.

(From BBC Monitoring International Reports)

Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has given an interview to Pakistan Observer newspaper in which he describes the meeting in Turkey between Pakistani and Israeli foreign ministers as having taken place at very short notice and through Turkish mediation. In the interview he says that "all major political parties" have supported the step, the motive for which was to improve the situation for the Palestinians. He reiterated the government's position that Pakistan will not recognize Israel until the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. On the subject of domestic politics, referring to opposition parties threats to resign from assemblies and call for fresh elections he said that Pakistan had "no culture of accepting defeat gracefully". The following is the text of the report by Aroosa Alam, published by Pakistani newspaper Pakistan Observer website on 5 September

Islamabad Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz for the first time lifted the veil from the day-to-day and hour-to-hour development that led to the "historic shake-hand" between Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri and his Israeli counterpart saying that there were no long pre-discussions on the meeting and back and forth diplomacy lasted only for a week before the two foreign ministers met in Istanbul.

In an exclusive interview with Pakistan Observer on Sunday [4 September] afternoon, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz shunned the impression that he was being kept in dark on vital national issues and shots were called by others. "The meeting took place on a very short notice through Turkey. I spoke to the Turkish prime minister and he immediately spoke to …