Russia and the United States, along with the European Union and UN, have been mediating conflicts in the region as the Middle East Quartet.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov and Williams Burns, U.S. ambassador to Russia, focused on the situation in Lebanon since the August 14 ceasefire that ended a four-week conflict between Hizbollah militants and Israel.
"Saltanov set out Russia's approaches to resolving the Lebanon-Israel conflict and breaking the deadlock in relations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel," the Foreign Ministry said.
Israeli military operations in Lebanon killed about 1,000 Lebanese civilians, left the south of the country regions in ruins and thousands of people homeless. Hizbollah's missile attacks killed about 100 Israelis, most of them soldiers.
The UN has deployed troops in southern Lebanon to enforce the truce and eventually hopes to increase it to 15,000 mainly via EU contributions. Lebanon plans to send in the same number of government troops. Russia's participation in the peacekeeping mission has also been discussed.
Fighting with the Palestinian Authority, now run by the radical Hamas movement, which has refused to recognize Israel, continued throughout the operations against Lebanon and afterward.
President Jacques Chirac of France, which will lead the international contingent in Lebanon, called Monday for the Quartet to gather for a meeting shortly to address relations between Israelis and Palestinians and to prevent violence from spiraling out of control and spreading to other countries.
