PM: Moscow ready to facilitate meeting between Netanyahu, Abbas

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said his country is ready to take more active efforts for organizing direct contacts between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

In an interview with the Israeli Channel 2 in the run-up to his visit to Israel next week, Medvedev said "We’re ready to make more active efforts for resumption of the process, including direct contacts between Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu anyplace where they might wish to meet, for instance, in Russia,".

"Moscow is not seeking to replace Washington in this process although one should say frankly the U.S. didn’t work especially hard in that direction over recently," Medvedev added.

"Quite possibly, some steps should have been made energetically".

He called the quartet of international mediators in the Palestinian-Israeli settlement Russia, the U.S., the UN, and the EU - "not bad on the whole" and offering a steady model.

"It’s another thing we don’t see any encouraging signals in the Middle East peace settlement of late, Medvedev went on.

"To put it frankly, nothing has been achieved recently and that’s saddening".

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told reporters earlier Russia continued making contact in order to organize a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister and Palestinian President in Moscow.

Source: MENA