ISLAMABAD: President Dr. Arif Alvi rejected reports about an Israeli aircraft landing in Pakistan and termed the allegations “baseless and unfounded.”
He made this statement on Sunday while talking to media at Islamabad airport, Pakistan’s state-run radio reported.
“We are not going to establish any ties with Israel,” Radio Pakistan quoted Alvi as saying.
Earlier Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, while talking to media at his home town Multan, on Saturday, said reports suggesting that an Israeli aircraft landed in the Pakistani capital are “fake”.
Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) also rejected the reports.
“There is absolutely no truth in the rumors that an Israeli plane landed at any airport in Pakistan,” a CAA spokesperson clarified in a statement.
There was uproar on social media after the reports that a plane flying from Tel Aviv allegedly landed in Pakistan.
Activists, journalists and opposition lawmakers including former Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal sought an explanation from the government on the reports.
After the upheaval, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said in tweet that the government of Pakistan “would not engage in any secret dialogue with Modi (India) or Israel.”
Chaudhry regretted the reports of the presence of any Israeli aircraft in Pakistani airspace or at its airports.
Reports about the Israeli plane began to appear on Oct. 25, after the editor of Jewish newspaper Haaretz, Avi Scharf, tweeted that a plane had flown from Tel Aviv to Islamabad.

Israeli bizjet flew from TLV to Islamabad, #Pakistan , on the ground 10 hours, and back to TLV.
Cleared flight-plan with usual 5min groundtime trick in Amman
M-ULTI glex pic.twitter.com/haHn1NU73L

— avi scharf (@avischarf) October 25, 2018

He alleged in his tweet that the plane was not flying directly from Tel Aviv to Islamabad. Instead, it followed a deception route by landing in Amman briefly to make it look like an Amman-Islamabad flight.
Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), however, has categorically rejected any news about an Israeli plane landing in Pakistan.

Civil Aviation Authority has categorically rejected any news regarding landing of Israeli Plane in Pakistan.#Israel #CAA pic.twitter.com/7HZLjvq1J0

— Govt of Pakistan (@pid_gov) October 27, 2018

Pakistan and Israel do not have diplomatic relations and therefore their aircraft are not allowed to use each other’s airspace.