US reportedly pushing Niger to normalize ties with Israel
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
US Secretary of State urged Niger to normalize ties with Israel during a visit last month in the West African country, Axios reports.
Blinken raised the issue during his meeting with Niger President Mohamed Bazoum, Axios says.
Blinken updated Foreign Minister Eli Cohen on his effort in a phone call later that month. Cohen proposed that Niger participate in the next ministerial meeting of the Negev Forum, according to the report.
Israeli officials tell Axios that Niger is willing to normalize ties with the Jewish state but would like to receive incentives from the Biden administration in return.
The US has already been seeking to bring new countries into the Negev Forum, including several from Africa, though the Biden administration failed to convince any of them to join the January meeting of working groups in Abu Dhabi, two officials from Negev Forum countries told The Times of Israel last month.
Its efforts to expand the forum, which currently includes the US, Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Egypt, are ongoing, though Arab members have held off on finalizing a date for the next ministerial summit amid discomfort with the political situation in Israel, the officials said.
The Niger Embassy in Washington and the State Department did not respond to Axios’s requests for comment.
Israel and Niger had diplomatic ties in the 1960s and again from 1996 to 2002 but they broke down both times amid upticks in violence between Israelis and Palestinians
