JERUSALEM, Sept 13 (AFP) - An aide to controversial Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi talked of normalizing his country's relations with the Jewish state during a visit to Israel, according to local media reports Monday.
"Many intellectuals in Iraq know that Israel must be taken into account as an existing fact and that generations of people have been born here," Mithal al-Alusi told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
It is in Iraq's interest to have diplomatic relations with everyone, and that is what we want," he added.
Alusi, a member of Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress Party, was attending a conference on terrorism at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center near Tel Aviv, the paper said.
The paper also said a meeting between senior Iraqi and Israeli officials had been held in Jordan's capital Amman last week.
Chalabi, a leading figure in the exiled opposition to Saddam Hussein before last year's US-led invasion, fell out of favor with his longtime US sponsors over allegations he had leaked classified intelligence to Iran.
There was a failed assassination against him earlier this month.
Israel was Iraq's archfoe under Saddam, who stood by the Palestinians and during the 1991 Gulf War ordered the firing of dozens of Scuds missiles on Israel.
Although Saddam was deposed by US-led forces in April 2003, there are still no diplomatic relations between the two countries.