Sergei Yakovlev said he and fellow negotiators from the Mideast Quartet, comprising Russia, the United States, European Union, and the United Nations, will hold a preparatory meeting in Paris on January 24.
"A meeting of the [Quartet] negotiators will be held under the umbrella of a conference on Lebanon, during which we will be discussing not just the agenda of the February 2 meeting [in the U.S. capital], but also possible steps and documents, and we will try to arrive at a common denominator," Yakovlev said. "We expect a serious substantive discussion on the whole range of issues relating to the Mideast settlement."
At the Washington meeting, the UN will be represented by the organization's new secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, while Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, which currently holds the European Union's rotating presidency, will represent the 27-nation bloc.
The latest Mideast Quartet ministerial meeting took place on the sidelines of a UN General Assembly session in New York in September 2006.
The participants expressed their support for efforts by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to form a national unity government and urged radical Islamist movement Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce violence, and implement the 2003 "roadmap" peace plan, which provides for a two-state solution to the Mideast conflict.
