On 26 January, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will hold talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, who will be in Russia on a working visit.

The two ministers will discuss current regional and international issues, focusing on the Middle East and fighting the growing threat of terrorism and extremism. Russia intends to reaffirm its position of principle in support of the fight against this universal evil based on international law and excluding double standards.

They will also discuss one of the key regional goals, which is a comprehensive, fair and lasting Palestinian-Israeli settlement on the basis of accepted international legal principles. Moscow is alarmed by the current deterioration in Palestinian-Israeli relations and has urged them not to fan tensions but to take steps to meet each other halfway to create the basis for resuming the political process. In this context, it is important to use the potential of the quartet of international mediators in the Middle East settlement process with due regard for a Russian initiative on holding a ministerial meeting of the quartet.

The ministers will also talk about the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, specifically progress at the talks on Iran's nuclear programme.

Sergey Lavrov and Avigdor Liberman will touch base on the key issues of bilateral relations. In particular, they will discuss in detail the further development of Russian-Israeli business partnership in light of the implementation of existing agreements and the decisions of the Joint Russian-Israeli Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation, highlighting priority spheres of cooperation such as science-intensive and manufacturing sectors, energy, information technology and communications, space research, agriculture, transport and tourism.

Russia highly values the traditional relations of friendship with Israel and attaches much significance to the consistent development of bilateral cooperation in various spheres. It believes that the upcoming talks will give a fresh impetus to political dialogue on regional and international issues and will promote bilateral business ties.