Israel and Pakistan, which do not have diplomatic ties, held secret talks during the Musharraf regime at the initiative of Turkey to discuss ways to bring the two countries together, Turkish Premier Tayyip Erdogan has said. During the tenure of former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, Turkey brought the foreign ministers of the Jewish and Muslim nations together, Erdogan told Newsweek. "In these talks, at least we started the process of coming together. The request came from Pakistan and Israel to bring them together, so we did. The meetings took place for two days in secret about two years ago," he said. Erdogan said that Turkey also initiated "telephone diplomacy" and took part in peace talks between Israel and Palestinian authority to bring peace in the region. "At the request of Sriya we entered a phase of working together with Israel and Syria indirectly to get them to talk with each other. We are mediators in that process. This was an example of how much importance we put on peace in the Middle East. We had done this before with Pakistan and Israel," he added. "We had a meeting with (Israeli) Prime Minister Olmert in Ankara. On that day we had the fifth round of the unofficial talks between Syria and Israel. That night we had very intense telephone diplomacy. I was talking on the phone to Syrian President Bashar Assad, and I was talking to Olmert in person and also to the Syrian Foreign Minister, so it was very intense diplomacy," he said.