Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late Wednesday spoke by phone with newly elected Argentinian president Mauricio Macri, congratulating him on the victory and inviting him to visit Israel.
Macri won the presidency in a runoff vote on Sunday, heralding an end to 12 years of left-wing government by the populist Peronist movement.
According to the Prime Minister's Office, Macri told Netanyahu that Argentina's stance toward Israel is about to change for the better and that cooperation between the two countries in various areas will expand.
The relations between the two countries have been frosty during the left-wing rule of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, whose strong ties with Israel's regional arch enemy Iran meant her ties with Jerusalem were tense at best.
Macri, the outgoing mayor of Buenos Aires and the owner of the Boca Juniors football team, has close ties with the country's Jewish community. During his campaign, he vowed to cancel the controversial Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which Kirchner signed with Iran regarding the investigation into the unsolved 1994 bombing at a Buenos Aires Jewish center, which left 114 people dead and more than 500 wounded.
Earlier this year, the unexplained death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who accused Kirchner of signing the deal to cover up Iranian involvement in the bombings for commercial reasons, became an international scandal.
Tal Shalev is the diplomatic correspondent at i24news
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