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Comments (2)Russia’s foreign minister defended his country’s holding direct talks with Hamas in Gaza, while his Israeli counterpart said achieving peace would take time.
“Yes, we are holding talks with Hamas—because it was elected by a large Palestinian majority in free elections, according to all elements,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday in Jerusalem following a meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Avigdor Lieberman.
Lavrov added that he believed that the talks were yielding results and that “we are witnessing positive movements.” He said Russia was encouraging Hamas to accept the Arab Peace Initiative, which offers Israel regional peace in exchange for land.
During the joint news conference, Lieberman said there would not be an independent Palestinian state in the next two years.
“I’m an optimistic person, but there is absolutely no chance of reaching a Palestinian state by 2012,” Lieberman said. “One can dream and imagine, but we are far from reaching understandings and an agreement.”
The Quartet, of which Russia is a member along with the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, have called for peace between Israel and the Palestinians by 2012.
Wiesel Working to Free Former Yukos Exec
Elie Wiesel has launched a global campaign to free former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is on trial in Moscow for embezzlement.
On the eve of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to the United States, Wiesel held a lunch June 24 for several dozen prominent Americans to discuss how to pressure Russian leadership to release Khodorkovsky, whom Wiesel called a political prisoner.
“We all believe it is a political case,” said the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust memoirist at the meeting. “He is not legally convicted.”
Obama and Medvedev reportedly did not discuss Khodorkovsky’s case during their June 24 meeting.
Khodorkovsky, the former head of the Yukos oil company, is serving an eight-year sentence in a prison colony for fraud and tax evasion. He faces another 22 years in prison for theft and embezzlement if convicted of stealing $9.6 billion from the $15.8 billion profit generated by Yukos between 1999 and 2003, as well as 350 million tons of oil.
Elena Bonner, a prominent Russian human rights activist and public figure, who was also invited to the lunch but was not able to participate, published an open letter to the participants saying that their initiative was noble but they should not forget other political prisoners in Russia.
Leonid Nevzlin, Khodorkovsky’s former partner who immigrated to Israel in 2004, in his blog on Live Journal agreed with Bonner, the wife of the late dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov, saying that the focus on political prisoners in Russia should not be solely on Khodorkovsky.
Engel Slams Chavez on ‘Genocidal’ Slur
The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Latin American subcommittee slammed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for calling Israel a “genocidal” state.
Chavez, who is hosting Syrian President Bashar Assad this week, described their countries as having “common enemies”: “The Yankee empire, the genocidal state of Israel.”
U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said Chavez needed to distract attention from his own problems.
“If my country had one of the highest murder rates in the world, the highest inflation rate in Latin America, and an economy which is expected to shrink by more than 6 percent this year, I, too, would be talking about anything but what’s going on at home,” Engel said. “I guess that’s why Mr. Chavez is attacking the Israelis and why Foreign Policy Magazine just ranked him the 17th worst dictator in the world. And I guess that’s why he’s hanging around Bashar Assad … No. 12.”
B’nai B’rith International also condemned the remarks.
“This meeting was a political move by Venezuela to form an additional partnership with another Middle East state sponsor of terrorism,” B’nai B’rith executive vice president Daniel Mariaschin said, referring to Chavez’s closeness to the Iranian regime. “We call on the civilized world to unite together and oppose this language in the strongest of terms.”