Mideast quartet to meet monday

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will attend a Quartet meeting of international mediators on the Middle East peace process in New York, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. Quartet consultations will take place on the sidelines of a UN Security council ministerial meeting on the Middle East and North Africa next Monday. “Russia initiated the event in January 2012,” the ministry said. The peace process has been stalled for more than a year, bedeviled by continuing Israeli settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian territories and by the Palestinians' bid for full membership to the United Nations. The Quartet, comprising the UN, the European Union, Russia and the United States, resumed peace talks this September with the goal of bringing the two sides to the negotiating table after bilateral talks stalled last year.