Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will visit Russia between March 22 and 24, the Kremlin said on Friday.
Abbas will meet with President Dmitry Medvedev on March 22, the presidential press service said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu's office announced on Thursday that the premier will visit Russia on March 24. It is unclear, however, if the Israeli and Palestinian leaders will meet in Moscow.
The agenda of the Moscow talks is expected to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, as well as on inter-Palestinian dialogue. Abbas' visit will take place ahead of a meeting of the Quartet of international mediators of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, due in mid-April.
The meeting was to take place in Paris in mid-March, but was postponed at request of the U.S. Russia has warned that the Israeli-Palestinian issue should not be shelved amid unrest in the Middle East and called on its partners in the Quartet - the United States, the European Union and the United Nations - to step up efforts on the Israeli-Palestinian track.
Direct negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders came to a halt in September 2010, just a few weeks after resuming in Washington following a 20-month break. Abbas withdrew from the talks after Israel refused to prolong a moratorium on the construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank, which expired in late September last year. The Israelis maintain that the settlement issue is not an obstacle to negotiations.
The Russian Foreign Ministry hailed on Thursday progress in relations between rival Palestinian movements Hamas and Fatah.
Abbas, who heads Fatah - which rules in the West Bank - announced on Wednesday his decision to visit Gaza "within four days" for reconciliation talks with the Hamas leadership. The two Palestinian movements remain at odds since Hamas ousted Fatah from Gaza in 2007, seizing power in the enclave.
Abbas will visit Gaza at the invitation of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which came after hundreds of thousands of young Palestinians marched in Gaza and the West Bank on Wednesday calling for Palestinian unity.
During a visit to the Palestinian Authority in January, Medvedev reaffirmed Russia's endorsement of an independent Palestinian state, saying that Russia's position remained "unchanged" since the Soviet Union recognized it in 1988.
MOSCOW, March 18 (RIA Novosti)
