UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will visit...

"The Secretary General will attend the Mideast Quartet meeting in Moscow on March 19 and will set off on a Middle East tour," said Emanuel Issoze-Ngondet of Gabon, who holds the rotating Security Council"s presidency for this month.

He added that the Secretary General would make a report to the Security Council on the results of his tour on March 24.

Russia, along with the UN, the United States and European Union, comprises part of the Middle East Quartet of intermediaries for peace efforts.

Talks between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority came to a halt in December 2008, when Israel launched an attack on the Gaza Strip in a bid to put an end to the firing of homemade rockets at southern Israel by Palestinian militants based in the enclave. The conflict left 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

Settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, has been the main obstacle

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