VIENNA, October 11. /TASS/. The Western countries’ aggressive policies, which blocked the work of the quartet of international mediators on the Middle East settlement, is to blame for the current bloodshed in the region, Yulia Zhdanova, a member of Russia’s delegation to the Vienna talks on military security and arms control, has said.

"The aggressive narrow-minded policies by the Western minority have caused the overflow of instability into the Asia-Pacific Region, and now have provoked unprecedented bloodshed in the Middle East. We attribute the current escalation of tensions in this region not only to the chronic failure to implement the relevant resolutions of the UN and its Security Council, but also to the West's blocking of efforts by the Middle East 'quartet' of international mediators consisting of Russia, the United States, the EU and the UN," she said at the plenary session of the OSCE Forum For Security Cooperation.

Zhdanova noted that Russia maintained close contact with all parties to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

"We call for an immediate ceasefire and the launch, with the assistance of the international community, of a negotiation process on a well-known legal basis, providing for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and for its coexistence in peace with Israel," she stressed.

Russia is also monitoring reports NATO weapons, previously been supplied to Kiev, have been discovered in the conflict zone,.

"For our part, we have for 18 months used all international platforms to emphasize the colossal risks Western weapons supplied to the neo-Nazi regime may surface on the black markets as a result of a corrupt link between Washington and Kiev. We assume that Israel has the necessary intelligence infrastructure to identify the source of weapons that have appeared in the conflict zone and make it public," Zhdanova said.

The situation in the Middle East has sharply escalated after armed infiltrations by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip into the territory of Israel. Hamas argues the attack was in response to the Israeli authorities' actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem's Temple Mount. Israel has declared a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip and begun strikes against it and parts of Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are also in progress in the West Bank. Up to 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and 5,000 others wounded. Israel has lost at least 1,200 killed and more than 3,000 wounded.