Mossad head Yossi Cohen met with a senior Sudanese official in a meeting arranged and hosted by the United Arab Emirates, Arabic media outlets reported on Friday.

The meeting between Cohen and General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, the deputy head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, was organized and attended by Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE national security adviser, according to the Qatari news outlet Al-Arabi Al-Jadid.

Sudan has denied the report of a meeting with Cohen.

According to what a Sudanese government official told The Associated Press last week, Israel and Sudan have been holding talks for months, with the assistance of Egypt, the UAE and the US.

“It’s a matter of time. We are finalizing everything. The Emirati move encouraged us and helped calm some voices within the government who were afraid of backlash from the Sudanese public,” the anonymous official said.

If an agreement is reached, it will include an arrangement to repatriate tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees in Israel, most in south Tel Aviv, whom the Israeli government claims are actually seeking jobs rather than asylum. The crime rate in south Tel Aviv has soared since the refugees’ arrival.

Former Sudanese Foreign Ministery spokesperson Haider Badawi Sadiq stated last Tuesday that Israel and Sudan were engaged in normalization talks.

However, Sudanese Foreign Minister Omar Qamar al-Din Ismail fired Sadiq the next day and said that he was “astonished” by Sadiq’s remarks that Sudan has had contact with Israel.

In February, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu‏‏ met the head of Sudan’s transitional government, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, during a trip to Uganda.

Following the meeting, Netanyahu reported that the two had discussed the normalization of ties between the two countries but Burhan later denied it.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)