JERUSALEM – Envoys of the Middle East Quartet were meeting with Israel’s chief peace negotiator on Thursday, as the Jewish state faced growing pressure to break the logjam in talks with the Palestinians.
Talks with Israeli envoy Yitzhak Molcho were being hosted by the US embassy, with Washington represented by David Hale, assistant to US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, an embassy spokesman told AFP. “There is a meeting today with the Quartet,” Kurt Hoyer said. “We believe that Molcho is there as well and our Quartet envoy David Hale is there.”
A European Union official in Jerusalem said the EU was represented at the meeting by Helga Schmid, deputy head of its external action service.
Middle East envoys Sergei Yakovlev and Robert Serry were attending for Russia and the United Nations respectively, other diplomats said. Netanyahu’s office would say only that such a meeting was scheduled for Thursday, without giving further details. The envoys were later due to meet with Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat in the West Bank town of Jericho, Palestinian officials told AFP.
The Quartet is seeking to push the Israeli and Palestinians into renewing some kind of peace negotiations, which ran aground in September last year over an intractable dispute about Jewish settlements.
As the diplomats shuttled back and forth between the two sides, Israeli and Palestinian media reports suggested Mitchell himself could make an appearance in the region next week after an absence of three months.
Diplomatic efforts to engage the two sides have increased in recent weeks ahead of a key meeting of the Quartet principles which is expected to talk place in Paris later this month.
But Israeli press reports on Thursday suggested the meeting of the Quartet — which groups the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — could be postponed by a month, possibly to allow Netanyahu to float a reportedly “new” peace initiative.
