Clinton joins summit in Moscow

Hillary Clinton will arrive at the Moscow summit tomorrow as anger over Israeli settlements hinders the peace progress in the Middle East..

Mrs Clinton will join the meeting of the Quartet of International Mediators in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, due to start on Friday.

Hope for successful peace discussions were diminished earlier this week when Israel declared it would build 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem. The US Secretary of State said the move was "a deeply negative signal" for the Middle East peace process. 

Israel’s announcement came just after Palestinian authorities had agreed to participate in US-mediated peace talks after a 15-month break.

Expensive

International efforts will not solve the problems when Israelis and Palestinians are moving farther apart, said Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of Moscow's Institute of Middle East Studies told Reuters.  He dismissed the quartet as "a very expensive club for diplomats".

The quartet is made up of Russia, the UN, the United States and the European Union.

With Middle East peace prospects dim, Russian analysts said, the trip will give Mrs Clinton a chance to push for a new nuclear arms control treaty with Russia and for Moscow's support for sanctions on Iran.

"For Clinton, the quartet meeting is just a strong pretext to come to Moscow and press the reset button again," said analyst Lilia Shevtsova of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, referring to the Obama administration's efforts to mend ties with Russia.

Russian and US teams have been negotiating for months on a successor to the 1991 START I treaty.  Fyodor Lukyanov , the editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, said that they could have a deal ready for signing by early April.