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Moscow says Palestine-Israeli contacts key to Mideast peace

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Regular contacts between Israeli and Palestinian leaders are crucial to breaking the deadlock in talks on the Middle East peace process, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.
MOSCOW, February 20 (RIA Novosti) - Regular contacts between Israeli and Palestinian leaders are crucial to breaking the deadlock in talks on the Middle East peace process, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.

Since the Islamist group Hamas came to power in Palestine, Western nations have blocked aid to the Palestinian government over its refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist, give up violence and comply with previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements seeking a solution to the protracted Middle East crisis.

"It is important that Palestinian-Israeli contacts on such a level acquire a regular and substantive character," Mikhail Kamynin said, commenting on Monday's tripartite meeting in West Jerusalem between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said previously that Moscow values highly Rice's efforts to achieve a resolution of the issue, adding that the earlier agreement between the Palestinian president-led Fatah movement and the Islamist group Hamas augured well for the three-way meeting.

Hamas, which won elections in January 2006, and Fatah reached an agreement on the structure of a new power-sharing Cabinet at Saudi-sponsored negotiations in Mecca last week. The compromise was designed to avert a civil war and restart a constructive dialogue with Israel.

The agreement in Mecca was also discussed during Abbas' meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week in Amman, Jordan.

Putin told Abbas that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict could be resolved by observing the Mecca agreement and by returning an Israeli soldier captured by the Palestinians in June to exchange him for Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Hamas was one of the groups that claimed responsibility for the seizure.

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