MOSCOW. May 19 (Interfax) - Russia is "pressing" for the Quartet on the Middle East to hold a foreign minister-level meeting next month, a Russian Foreign Ministry source said.
"There will be a meeting at the level of special representatives of foreign ministers in Paris on May 25," the source told Interfax. Asked whether a ministerial meeting might take place in June, he said: "That's what we are pressing for."
"It's not only the United States that is slowing down the process itself. At the end of the day, there's nothing to talk about so far. Even if the ministers do get together, their positions are too different. And because everything is consensus-based, we won't be able to reach an agreement," the source said in comments on the Quartet's stalled activities.
"A ministerial meeting that ends without a statement is worse than no meeting at all. In other words, we've chosen what's the lesser of two evils by this moment," he said.
The Quartet members are the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia.