Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hosted a Middle East Quartet meeting in Washington with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and European Union policy chief Catherine Ashton.
No statement issued after the talks. Representatives from the four countries and organizations met regularly to start the stalled peace process it.
Abbas on Tuesday (12 / 7) said that if the quartet could not agree on the rules of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are acceptable, he would ask the full membership to the UN in September for a Palestinian state. Abbas was speaking after talks in Ramallah with Greek President Karolos Papoulias, who was visiting Palestine.
America, Israel and some EU countries opposed the plan Abbas. They said the talks are the only way to achieve the two-state solution for Israel-Palestinian conflict.
After the Quartet meeting, the senior American official said the participants believe the differences between the establishment of Israel and the Palestinians hinder progress in starting peace talks stalled last September. The official said more needs to be done before the quartet was able to call for another round of talks.