The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is due to pay a visit to Egypt on Sunday and Monday to concentrate on ways to reach a Middle East settlement.
Russia and Egypt signed a strategic partnership treaty during Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's official visit to Cairo in June this year. Sergei Lavrov's forthcoming talks with the Egyptian leaders will aim to secure further action on the agreements to promote foreign policy interaction between Moscow and Cairo, above all as regards regional affairs, says the Russian Foreign Ministry official spokesman Andrei Nesterenko. After all, Egypt is more than just Russia's strategic partner in bilateral dialogue, it is also an important player in a settlement of the Middle East situation. Here's more from Andrei Nesterenko.
During his forthcoming talks in Cairo, Andrei Nesterenko says, Sergei Lavrov will focus on the Middle East problems, above all, on the current situation around an Arab-Israeli settlement. The pace of developments and Russia's and Egypt's activities to that end prompt the need for continuous coordination of their efforts to rectify the Palestinian-Israeli situation and unblock the peace process in general. Moscow thinks highly of the Egyptian leaders' efforts to heal the rift in the Palestinian ranks, Andrei Nesterenko says.
The Russian Foreign Minister is also scheduled to meet the Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa to take up the Middle East problems. It is the Arab League that once adopted the peace initiative that the four international mediators in a Mid-Eastern settlement (Russia, the US, the European Union and the United Nations) keep urging Israel and Palestine to stick to. Given that Palestine and Israel currently avoid any dialogue, the mediators' quartet has obviously decided to turn to Russia to ask the Arab League for help.
The situation in the Middle East has indeed been growing increasingly involved recently and it clearly calls for resetting. On the one hand, the parties to the conflict will not resume talks, not at the moment at least, with officials in Ramallah and Tel Aviv sticking to their respective tough stands on each other. On the other hand, the international community has finally reached a compromise on settling the crisis. It is now Israel, now Palestine that is trying to win the mediators over to their side by sending government officials to bow down to the quartet members. But the mediators are just as insistent in driving it home to the parties to the conflict that Ramallah and Tel Aviv should first resume talks and give up confrontational demarches and unilateral moves. And only then will it be possible to call an international conference on the Middle East in Moscow.
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will once again brief the Arab world officials on Russia's position on the need for the UN-aided collective efforts in the interests of a comprehensive Middle East settlement. The Russian Foreign Minister will also sign, at the Arab League headquarters, a Memorandum on setting up a Russian-Arab Cooperation Forum, one that the Russian Foreign Ministry is certain will help push interaction between Russia and the Arab League member-nations to a higher level. This may prove quite important in the effort to search for fresh solutions to a Middle East settlement.
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