Moscow alarmed by situation in Mideast peace process - ministry (Part 2)

MOSCOW. Sept 8 (Interfax) - Russia is concerned by the absence of contacts between Israel and Palestine, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.

"Of course, we are very concerned by the current situation in the Israeli-Palestinian settlement process," he told journalists on Thursday.

"The absence of negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israeli for quite a long time now and the escalation of conflict between them shows that senior officials in the Palestinian National Authority are increasingly favoring the plan of raising the recognition of the Palestinian statehood at the forthcoming session of the [United Nations] General Assembly," Lukashevich said.

As regards the Russian position, "we have no problem recognizing the legitimacy of the Palestinian state," he said. "Actually, we already closed this issue more than 30 years ago," he said.

At the same time, Palestine's intention to act at the General Assembly "does not at all mean forgoing the search for negotiating solutions with Israel, and such a dialog, in our view, should be supported in every possible way, particularly, at the current stage, when there is a need to re-launch the whole negotiating process," the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

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