By RIA Novosti,
Moscow : A Moscow Mideast peace conference slated for June will strengthen Russia’s role in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview with a Russian daily.
He arrived in Moscow on a three-day visit on Wednesday, and is expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin later today.
Abbas told Nezavisimaya Gazeta he hoped the meeting would remove obstacles in the way to a peace settlement and “will salvage the peace process.”
He said that Russia is geographically close to the region and “therefore, stability is among its priority interests,” adding that the upcoming peace conference would “strengthen its role in the peace process.”
Putin first voiced the idea of holding a Moscow Mideast peace conference in 2005, and received the backing of several Arab countries prior to talks at a U.S.-sponsored conference held last year in the U.S.
Abbas said that several barriers continue to block the implementation of commitments made in Annapolis.
The Annapolis summit saw a resumption of talks between the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and Israel after a seven-year hiatus. The sides pledged to do everything possible to draft a peace settlement by the end of 2008, as well as to come to an agreement on the form of a future independent Palestinian state.
However, the talks came to a halt last month following a devastating Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip left 120 Palestinians dead. Abbas announced he would resume talks following a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the end of March.
The fragile peace talks were again under threat after the past week saw an escalation in violence in the region, on Thursday 20 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed along with three Israeli soldiers in air strikes and fighting in the Gaza Strip.
Abbas’ Fatah party controls the West Bank after being ousted by the hard-line Islamic group Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and some EU states, from the Gaza Strip in a bloody conflict last June.
Asked whether Hamas could be invited to the Moscow conference, Abbas said that would not be possible since Hamas members “are not part of an official government.”
“Hamas did not even attend the Arab League summit in Damascus. It simply has no such rights,” he said.