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Middle East Quartet to meet with Blair Tuesday

RIA Novosti

09/07/2007 16:52

MOSCOW, July 9 (RIA Novosti) - Middle East mediators will meet with Tony Blair Tuesday for the first time since his appointment as a top peacemaking envoy to the Middle East, a senior Russian diplomat said Monday.

"This meeting has been on the agenda," said Sergei Yakovlev, a Russian special envoy on the Middle East settlement.

Blair, the former British prime minister, was appointed in June to be the new envoy of the Quartet of Mideast mediators, comprising the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

The Russian diplomat said that the Tuesday meeting in London would discuss the situation in the region, particularly in the zone of the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli-Palestinian talks have been stalled for seven years.

"In addition, the Quartet will discuss its future agenda, including the date of the next meeting at the foreign ministerial level," Yakovlev said.

The scheduled meeting of the Quartet was postponed in June following the outbreak of violence in the Gaza Strip in an ongoing power struggle between the Islamist group Hamas and Fatah, which left scores dead and Palestinian lands divided into two parts, with Gaza being controlled by Hamas and the West Bank under the control of President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement.

In an attempt to end an international blockade, Abbas dissolved the national unity government forming an emergency Cabinet, which received backing from the international community.

Hamas has refused to recognize Abbas' decision, continuing to work in the Gaza Strip, and was involved in securing the release of journalist Alan Johnston last week, held by a radical Islamic group for 114 days.

Israel and Western powers consider Hamas a terrorist organization.

Unlike the other members of the Middle East Quartet that have backed Fatah, Russia has insisted all Palestinian factions be engaged in the peace process and said dividing Palestinian territories would be dangerous.