"The agenda for the meeting is being prepared," said Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the international affairs committee in the upper house of the Russia's parliament and rapporteur on the Middle East for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
The meeting of the PACE subcommittee on the Middle East had originally been planned for 2006 but was put off after Hamas won the Palestinian general election. The radical Islamist group was ousted from the governing coalition after it seized control of the Gaza Strip in June last year in a violent coup.
Hamas has come under intense international pressure to meet previous Palestinian leaders' agreements with Israel and resume the political process under the 'road map for peace' initiated by the Quartet of international mediators - Russia, the European Union, the United States, and the United Nations.
Last November's U.S.-hosted Mideast summit saw a resumption of talks between the Palestinian National Authority and Israel after a seven-year hiatus. The sides pledged to do everything possible to draft a peace settlement by the end of 2008, as well as to come to an agreement on the form of a future independent Palestinian state.
However, the talks came to a halt last month following a devastating Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip left 120 Palestinians dead. Abbas announced he would resume talks following a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the end of March.
Moscow is due to host a Mideast peace conference, a follow-up to last November's talks in Annapolis, in June. The conference, which has received the backing of several Mideast states including Syria, is expected to bring major breakthroughs and strengthen Russia's role in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, according to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who is currently in Moscow.
