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Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Monday that the Middle East Quartet -- the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- will give final approval to the so-called "road map" for Israeli-Palestinian peace in early February.
The Quartet plans to meet again in early February and give final approval to the road map and then present the document to the conflicting parties, Ivanov told a press conference after talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Details of the "road map" plan have not been completed, but the plan broadly seeks Palestinian statehood, improvements in security and Israeli pullbacks in the West Bank and Gaza.
Stopping terrorist attacks against Israel is a premise for a peaceful solution to the Middle East crisis, said Netanyahu.
He said Israel hopes to be guaranteed that Palestine will realize its self-governing without doing harm to the Israeli state.The Israeli leadership will reconsider the concept of Palestine's sovereignty and statehood if Israel gets guarantee for its national security, he added.
During their meeting focusing on the Middle East tensions, the two ministers discussed both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the growing prospect of war in Iraq.
Ivanov reiterated that Iraq unconditionally fulfills the terms of the UN Security Council resolution on weapons inspections and that any action against Iraq for noncompliance must be taken only within the framework of UN resolutions.
"Any action beyond the United Nations Security Council resolutions can only make the situation more complex," he said.
(Xinhua News Agency December 24, 2002)
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