Collective efforts essential to unblocking Mideast peace process.

MOSCOW, December 30 (Itar-Tass) - Middle East peace process can be
extricated out of the current deadlock only if all parties involved apply
collective efforts to it, violence is stopped and negotiations resume,
Andrei Nesterenko, the Russian Foreign Ministry's official spokesman said
Tuesday, commenting on the situation in the region at a request from the
Russian news media.

He indicated that recent reports from the Middle East are not
reassuring, as Israeli crack troops shot and killed three Palestinians in
Nablus December 26 and another three Palestinian citizens were killed on
the same day during a helicopter raid in the Gaza Strip.
"December 24, a rabbi who was a resident of an Israeli settlement was
killed in the north of the West Bank, and two bodyguards of a Hamas
representative in Lebanon died two days later in a car bomb attack in
Beirut," Nesterenko said. "The overall picture is really patchy and
disturbing."
"Moscow is watching developments in the region closely, as outbursts
of violence like these ones cannot but cause serious concern and
condemnation," he said.
"In essense, they testify to the fragility and explosiveness of the
situation, and the root-cause of all this is the deadlock where the Middle
East peace process has been driven into," Nesterenko said.
"The only opportunity of averting the ominous scenarios is the
resumption of collective peace settlement efforts in the interests of a
durable and just peace in the region," he said.