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Russia unaware of Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ on Middle East settlement — Lavrov

Trump earlier repeatedly announced plans to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians

NEW DELHI, December 11. /TASS/. Moscow has no idea what "the deal of the century" on the Palestinian-Israeli settlement proposed by Washington means, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters on Monday.

"I don’t know if "the deal of the century" has disappeared or not because no one has seen it. It was advertised but very vaguely. We don’t know what this means," Lavrov said.

US President Donald Trump has earlier repeatedly announced plans to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but gave no details about his initiative.

Read also

Russia not claiming to solve Israeli-Palestinian conflict on its own, says Lavrov

Earlier, Lavrov said US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hinted at the Vienna meeting on December 7 that Washington expected to clinch "the deal of the century."

Russia’s top diplomat noted that Moscow seeks to "understand how this will look like" after Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and begin the process of moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv there.

The US leader’s statement made last week caused a public outcry around the world, namely in the Arab countries.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the pressing issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel insists that Jerusalem is its "eternal and indivisible" capital, whereas Palestine strives for the city’s eastern part to become the capital city of their state. Under the resolutions of UN Security Council and General Assembly, the problem of the status of the ancient city should be resolved through direct negotiations between the parties to the conflict.

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Sergey Lavrov Donald Trump

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