Security Council Sees Hope for Mideast

UNITED NATIONS -- Security Council members are optimistic that a key meeting next month on the Israel-Palestinian conflict will help revive the stalled peace process, Russia's U.N. ambassador said Thursday.

The so-called quartet of Middle East peace brokers _ the U.S., the European Union, Russia and the U.N. _ will meet in Washington on Feb. 2 to explore ways of reinvigorating peacemaking.

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said there was hope that the meeting would lead to a wider international conference to end the conflict.

"There was a strong feeling that there were some signs of hope, which should be fully taken advantage of by the international community," Churkin told reporters after a Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East.

"Maybe not in such a long run, this process could culminate in an international conference, which needs to be well prepared, but which would bring about a long-awaited settlement of the situation in the Middle East," he said.

A "road map" for peace launched by the quartet in 2003 never got off the ground because each side failed to meet its initial obligations. The plan outlined stages for creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

However, there has been flurry of diplomatic activity in recent weeks to revive the peace process, and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas planned to meet Friday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Churkin said key to next month's meeting will be helping the Palestinians form a unity government.

Abbas, of the more moderate Fatah party, has been locked in a power struggle with the Islamic militant Hamas, which won control of the Palestinian parliament in elections last year. Dozens of people have been killed in fighting between the rival factions.

Abbas has been pushing for a unity government partly as a bid to end Western sanctions imposed on the Hamas-led government for its refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.

Ibrahim Gambari, undersecretary-general for political affairs, told the Security Council that despite the sanctions, aid to the territories rose nearly 10 percent in 2006 over the previous year.

Gambari said more than half of the aid had come from Arab countries. Some Western countries have continued to fund humanitarian programs for the Palestinians, but the aid bypasses the government in keeping with the embargo.

Despite the increase in aid, Gambari said the territories' GDP per capita fell by at least 8 percent in 2006 and poverty rose by 30 percent.

Without a revived peace process, Gambari said, "the most that aid can do is contain for a limited time the spread of grievances and the spread of instability."