OREANDA-NEWS. President of the State of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas is counting on a bilateral meeting with Vladimir Putin on the margins of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia in Dushanbe on 15 June. This was announced in an interview with the Russian media by the Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki.

"I expect that [this will happen] next month in Tajikistan, where a summit on interaction and confidence-building measures in Asia will be held," he said. "As far as we understand, President Putin will participate in it, our president will also be there. We are working over the organization of their meeting during the summit. "The Kremlin’s official announcement of Putin’s plans to meet with Abbas in Dushanbe wasn't.

Al-Maliki recalled that his last meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov took place two weeks ago on the fields of the Russian-Arab Cooperation Forum. "We discussed the situation in Palestine, the Israeli position on the so-called occupied territories, as well as the expected" deal of the century " US proposal on a Palestinian-Israeli settlement," the minister said. According to al-Maliki, for him "Lavrov’s assurance that the Russian side does not recognize the" deal of the century "if it violates the previously reached multilateral agreements was especially important." "The Russian representatives made it clear that their position is 100 percent consistent with the UN line, with resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly, and they expect their respect from other countries," the minister said.

Riyad al-Maliki also said that Palestine does not see in the near future the possibility of resuming talks with Israel in any format. “At this stage, the negotiation process is not a priority for us,” he said. “In the near future, I don’t see an opportunity for the resumption of negotiations, whatever the format".