Israeli minister to lead delegation to UAE energy summit

Israel's Minister of Energy Silvan Shalom travels on Friday to the United Arab Emirates to attend a conference on renewable energy, a spokesman said. Shalom, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, will head a delegation to the International Renewable Energy Agency's conference in Abu Dhabi, the spokesman said. The conference is due to open Saturday and the minister returns home on Monday, he added. Israel has quietly been seeking the alliance of Gulf monarchies, which like the Jewish state are concerned over Iran's rising regional power. In May daily newspaper Haaretz revealed Israel had allocated a budget for a diplomatic mission in one of the Persian Gulf states. In January 2010 Hamas military commander Mahmud al-Mabhuh was found dead in a Dubai hotel room, in what investigators in the UAE believe was an assassination carried out by Israel's Mossad spy agency.