BICOM

EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton said yesterday that the Middle East Quartet group will meet early next month to discuss ways to break the deadlock in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Ashton said the Quartet group (consisting of the European Union, United Nations, United States and Russia) will hold a high-level meeting around the Munich Security Conference in February to revive the process and plan a way forward.

Ashton is currently on a two day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories and said that her trip to the region at the beginning of the year expresses the EU’s commitment to solving the conflict in the region. “I have urged both Israelis and Palestinians to find a satisfactory way to engage without delay in substantive negotiations on all final-status issues. There is no alternative to a negotiated solution,” Ashton said in a statement yesterday.