MUNICH: Israel and the Palestinians should recognize the security risk posed by the turmoil in Egypt and urgently speed up peace efforts, the Quartet of Middle East peace brokers said Saturday. The United Nations, European Union, Russia and the United States said further delays in resuming Israeli-Palestinian talks would be “detrimental to prospects for regional peace and security”. “The Quartet emphasized the need for the parties and others concerned to undertake urgently the efforts to expedite Israeli-Palestinian and comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace,” they said in a statement. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton took part in the meeting along with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. “The events we have witnessed in the region mean it's hugely important they make progress in the Middle East peace process,” Ashton told a news conference. The Quartet agreed it would discuss the “dramatic developments in Egypt and elsewhere in the region” and the implications for the peace process as a matter of high priority. It reiterated support for concluding the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations by September this year and said the Quartet would meet again in mid-March on the way ahead. Quartet envoys would seek to meet separately with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators before this in Brussels, it said. Western governments fear unrest in Egypt could lead to radicalization that could threaten Cairo's role in the peace efforts and even its own 1979 peace agreement with Israel. Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the Palestinians welcomed any meetings of the Quartet but were “demanding a staunch position regarding (Israeli) settlements so that we can go to negotiations”. “The crisis of the Middle East is linked to the continuation of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories,” he said. The Quartet statement said the group “regrets” the discontinuation of Israel's 10-month moratorium on settlement activity. It also “strongly reaffirms that unilateral actions by either party cannot prejudge the outcome of the negotiations and will not be recognized by the international community”.
