Russia is ready to share its ideas on resuming the negotiating process on the Middle East settlement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday, opening talks with Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki.
"We are concerned about the lack of promising agreements on how to resume the peace process, peace talks. We are ready to help, we have some ideas. Today's contacts with you are particularly important for us," Lavrov said.
"Your assessments of the situation in the Middle East and northern Africa are very important to us. First of all, of course, in Palestine," the minister stressed, addressing his Palestinian colleague.
"Sustained and concrete" contacts
After the talks, Lavrov said Russia was working on organizing a meeting of the quartet on the Middle East settlement (Russia, US, UN, European Union) at the level of foreign ministers. "In order to activate this platform, we are now working with other quartet participants to consider the possibility of organizing a quartet meeting at the level of foreign ministers," he said.
Russia deems it necessary to establish more "stable and concrete" contacts between representatives of the quartet and the Arab League, the minister added.
In April, Vladimir Safronkov, Russian Foreign Minister's Special Representative for the Middle East Settlement, voiced Moscow's position at a teleconference of the special representatives of the Middle East Quartet of international mediators (Russia, US, UN, and EU) regarding the need to hold a quartet ministerial meeting as soon as possible.
Moscow expects that no one will delay work on organizing an international conference on the Middle East settlement, as the situation on the ground requires responsible and speedy decisions, Lavrov said. "We support the initiative of [Palestinian] President Mahmoud Abbas to prepare an international conference. As I said, this initiative was put forward at one time by the Russian side. It has been approved in principle by the [UN] Security Council. Of course, it needs careful preparation. I think that through the quartet and within the framework of the quartet's interaction with the Arab League, it is quite feasible to make such preparations. I hope nobody will use pretexts to drag this out, because the situation on the ground, of course, requires quick and responsible decisions," Lavrov said.
Facilitating dialogue between Palestine and Israel
Also, Lavrov said, Russia reiterated its readiness to facilitate a dialogue between Palestine and Israel to resolve all fundamental issues. "We discussed at length the state of affairs in the Palestinian-Israeli settlement. We have serious concerns about the worsening situation in East Jerusalem and around the Gaza Strip," he said. - "We stressed our readiness to comprehensively facilitate direct dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis to resolve all fundamental final status issues".
Russia assumes that normalization of relations between a number of Arab states and Israel must not "marginalize the Palestinian problem and lower the attention and responsibility of the world community for the implementation of the relevant UN decisions," Lavrov said.
Meeting of the Intergovernmental Economic Commission
Russia expects to hold a meeting of a joint intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation with Palestine in the near future, Lavrov said. "As soon as the epidemiological situation allows, we expect to hold another meeting of the intergovernmental commission on trade and economic cooperation. There are a number of promising projects that we have been intending to implement for quite a long time. I hope it will take place in the near future," he said.
The head of the RF Foreign Ministry noted that during today's negotiations the sides will also discuss "additional steps, which will allow Russia to continue and increase assistance" to Palestine in the fight against coronavirus.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry
Based on materials from TASS