MOSCOW, December 7 (RIA Novosti) - Russia continues to maintain contacts with both Hamas and Hezbollah as clashes between the Palestinians and Israelis continue and tensions in Lebanon persist, a senior diplomat said Thursday.
Russia, one of the Quartet countries mediating the Middle East conflict, has consistently taken a softer line than Western powers on the Islamic group Hamas, which leads the Palestinian government, and Lebanon-based Islamic militant group Hezbollah, both of which are considered terrorist organizations by Israel and most Western countries.
The Russian diplomat said, "I can say that we have never interrupted our contacts with representatives of the movements, which were elected [legitimately], be it in the Palestinian National Authority or in Lebanon."
Hamas, which won elections in January, has been implicated in missile attacks against Israel. Hezbollah was involved in a bloody conflict with Israel this summer which led to Israeli air strikes that killed over a thousand Lebanese and displaced a quarter of the country's population. Hezbollah is now one of the two main political parties representing the Shiites in Lebanon's parliament.
Russia was the first nation to accept the legitimacy of Hamas and invited a delegation from the group to Moscow after its election victory. But negotiations between the four mediators in the Middle East conflict - the UN, EU, U.S. and Russia - have stalled as Hamas is refusing to accept Israel's right to exist.
The Russian diplomat said Russia called for forming a sovereign Palestinian state and involving it in international processes as a way to resolve the Middle East crisis.
"The formation of a Palestinian state, which would have all the rights pursuant to a sovereign nation and assume a full set of corresponding obligations, would eventually resolve the Middle East problem," the diplomat said.
Israel and the United States, originally firmly opposed to negotiations with the Hamas government, have recently conceded the possibility of contacts, after Hamas said it would form a coalition government with the Fatah party of PNA President Mahmoud Abbas.
However, relations have been undermined by rocket attacks between Israel and PNA. Palestinian militants were locked in a five-month offensive with Israel, resulting in hundreds of Palestinian deaths, before a tentative ceasefire in mid-November.
The Russian diplomat also said no resolution could be expected without progress in negotiations between Israel and Syria, and Israel and Lebanon, but added that talks should be based on the Road Map plan, which the Quartet of mediators proposed in 2002.
"Russia believes that the tenets of the document are still valid," he said, adding that the timeframe now needed to be adjusted.
In mid-November, the Quartet met in the Russian Embassy in Cairo to resume Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, in their first meeting since Hamas came to power.
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for Quartet to be broadened to include the Israelis and the PNA leadership.
"Russia considers an expedited gathering of the Quartet of international mediators to be an urgent task," he said. "We are convinced that the leading countries of the region, as well as Palestinians and Israelis, should be invited [to the meeting] to make it productive."
