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Middle East and North Africa

Palestine president Abbas to visit Russia on January 23

Mahmoud Abbas and Vladimir Putin plan to discuss actual issues of bilateral cooperation and problems of regional security, including Middle East settlement

© EPA/ATEF SAFADI

MOSCOW, January 21. /ITAR-TASS/. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will pay a working visit to Russia on January 23 at invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin press service reported on Tuesday.

The negotiators “plan to discuss actual issues of bilateral cooperation and problems of regional security, including Middle East settlement.”

Last time Mahmoud Abbas paid an official visit to Russia in mid-March 2013. Then he had talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and head of Russia’s North Caucasian Republic of Karachai-Cherkessia Rashid Temrezov.

Before this Abbas visited Russia on January 19-24, 2012.

As the leader of the Palestine National Authority (PNA), Mahmoud Abbas paid the first official visit to Moscow in early 2005. The PNA leader has made ten visits in Russia since then.

Official contacts of the Soviet leadership with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) were established in February 1970, when the delegation headed by PLO leader Yasser Arafat visited Moscow for the first time. In the past years Arafat visited the Soviet Union and then Russia many times.

On November 18, 1988, the Soviet Union has recognized officially the State of Palestine, which was proclaimed at a session of the Palestine National Council in Algeria on November 15, 1988.

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Middle East and North Africa

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