Mexico’s foreign minister has called on Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu to apologise for expressing support for President Donald Trump's planned border wall.
President Trump's move to build the wall has triggered widespread international condemnation and plunged bilateral relations between the US and Mexico to an unprecedented low.
President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israel's southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea 🇮🇱🇺🇸
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) January 28, 2017
In a statement, the Mexican foreign ministry expressed "profound astonishment, rejection and disappointment" over the tweet. "Mexico is a friend of Israel and should be treated as such by its Prime Minister," the statement said.
On Monday, the foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, told the Televisa network that Mexico was expecting Netanyahu to clarify his comment.
"I think that an apology would be something appropriate in this case," he said.
Netanyahu’s comments come amid an increasingly bitter dispute over the controversial wall, which was a cornerstone of the new president’s election campaign.
Last week Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, cancelled a meeting with Trump after the US president reasserted campaign pledges to force Mexico to pay for the wall, which Mexico has repeatedly said it will not.
Jewish groups, including the Central Committee of the Jewish Community in Mexico, issued a joint statement "forcefully rejecting" Netanyahu’s position.