Abbas meets Putin as Russia returns to Middle East peace talks
AFP
Date: 01-30-05
MOSCOW (AFP) - Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas takes a brittle new Middle East peace initiative to Moscow in the first direct engagement of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the conflict in four years.
Both sides will seek to win profit from Monday's Kremlin talks. Russia has long been separated from the peace process while Abbas -- notably making a visit to Moscow before Washington -- seeks to win approval from a Cold War era power that once sided with the Arab world and may help him win acceptance from a splintered home electorate.
Abbas will be the first Palestinian leader to visit the Kremlin since November 2000 when former leader Yasser Arafat paid Putin a call before being locked up in his partially destroyed Mukatah compound by the Jewish state before his death.
It was a Kremlin moment of potential Middle East peace magic -- in the midst of the Arafat talks Putin dialed up the number of then Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and had the Jewish state's hardliner agree to seek a cease-fire with his foe.
But Arafat was then jailed amid continued violence in his own residence and Moscow became all but disengaged from a region in which it once played a dominant role. The moment of opportunity was lost.
Abbas for his part will not be paying his first visit to Moscow. He studied here in the Soviet era and in 1980 wrote a thesis linking Nazis and Zionists -- a view pushed by Moscow's Soviet leadership at the time.
He speaks the language and is familiar with Russian insiders to a certain extent.
Yet analysts agree that this will be a must do protocol call that will end with no firm commitments but simply bring the two sides closer together at a time when Russia is quickly rebuilding broken ties with Israel.
"It is not a coincidence that Abbas is coming to Moscow before he pays a visit to Washington," said Viktor Kremenyuk of the USA/Canada Institute.
"Abbas understands the United States still takes a skeptical view of him and he needs to raise his international standing," Kremenyuk said.
'He needs to show that he is respected abroad in order to raise his profile at home," agreed Oleg Barabanov of the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations.
Putin has so far issued no new peace initiatives except for underlining support for a Middle East road map that had been in tatters amid the daily violence until Abbas took power and won support this week from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Moscow has so far lobbied for an independent Palestinian state that lives in peace alongside Israel -- a view agreed by all but which has no specifics.
Issues such as the future status of Jerusalem have for the large part been avoided by Moscow but analysts say that details are not the point of the visit.
"Abbas is a first among equals in Palestine unlike Arafat, and so he needs our support," Barabanov said.
"People come to Moscow these days to raise their personal profile," agreed Sergei Kazennov of the Institute of Global Economy and International Relations.
"But Moscow really has little power in the region. At the moment it can hardly influence events there."
The visit comes amid a splash of Russian activity in the region. Putin hosted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad this week -- one of Moscow's most important regional allies.
Russia wrote off most off Syria's Soviet-era debt during that visit in what is widely seen as a way of making inroads to the regional peace process through Damascus.
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