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Quartet postpones meeting on Israeli-Palestinian peace process until next month

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The Middle East Quartet delayed a meeting to discuss Middle East peace talks scheduled for next week and plan to reconvene on the issue in April. A lower-level Quartet delegation will meet today with Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in Ramallah and on Friday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief negotiator Yitzchak Molcho in Jerusalem.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon planned to meet next week on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Paris but have delayed the meeting until next month. A Quartet official denied that the delay was due to expectations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to deliver a new diplomatic initiative. While, an Israeli official, according to the Jerusalem Post, said the Quartet needed the delay to deal with more pressing issues that are ongoing in the Arab World, referring to the current wave of protests that are taking place.