MOSCOW/GAZA, 12 July 2003 — Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov kicks off a five-day visit to the Middle East tomorrow aiming to step up Russia’s role in the peace process and push for the United States to speed up the formation of an Iraqi government. Ivanov plans to highlight security issues in his talks with regional leaders, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said yesterday, noting that Moscow was prepared to take part in joint monitoring operations with US forces in the Middle East.
Russia hails US efforts to stabilize the situation by setting up monitoring teams in the Middle East and “we for our part are ready to join them,” spokesman Alexander Yakovenko told the RIA Novosti news agency in an interview.
The “extreme acuity” of the situation in the Middle East “and the lack of trust between the parties in conflict” means that reconciliation will be difficult to achieve, so that the external monitoring teams will play “a key stabilizing role in the movement toward peace,” he said.
Ivanov, who is currently in Italy after visiting Belgium, has visits scheduled in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and the Palestinian territories, but not Israel.
His talks with Arab leaders will cover a wide range of security issues concerning completion of the first stage of the Mideast road map to peace, Yakovenko said. These include the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian territories to the positions of Sept. 28, 2000, the restructuring of Palestinian security forces, a freezing of the activities of Israeli settlers, and preparations for the holding of Palestinian elections, he said.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman Wednesday said Ivanov had requested a meeting with the Palestinian leadership, but it remained unclear whether he would meet Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas or other top Palestinian officials.
The road map brokered by the “quartet” of the United Nations, United States, Russia and the European Union envisages an end to the Palestinian intifada, the dismantling of some 60 unsanctioned Jewish settlements built in the Palestinian territories since Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took office in March 2001, and the graduated creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.
A Russian diplomat said Wednesday that Ivanov was not visiting Israel because Israeli leaders have other commitments at the time of the visit, but would probably visit in the autumn.
The former head of US forces who led the operation to oust the Saddam Hussein regime, General Tommy Franks, warned Thursday that US troops could remain in Iraq for as long as four years.
Meanwhile, around 3,000 Palestinians demonstrated yesterday in the streets of Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip to demand Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners. “We are asking the Palestinian Authority to work for a release of all prisoners from all groups,” said Nizar Nayyan, a senior official of the hard-line Islamic movement Hamas.
“If the prisoners are released during the truce, good. If not, we will kidnap Jewish soldiers until the release of the last Palestinian held in an Israeli jail,” he told the crowd. The demonstration organized by Hamas after Friday prayers in the mosques was attended by all Palestinian factions as well as a group of around 50 women whose sons or husbands are behind Israeli bars.
