Russia has proposed sending a UN Security Council mission to the Middle East to promote resumption of negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, Russia's envoy to the UN Vitaly Churkin said.
"The situation remains fragile in the region, while efforts to resume talks between the countries are still in the dead end," Churkin said adding that the UN Security Council had not sent its missions to the region since 1979.
"We believe that the Security Council mission will help to stabilize the situation as well as to promote international efforts to resume the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations," the diplomat said.
Direct talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, which resumed last September after a 20-month standoff, collapsed in December after Israel refused to stop construction in the occupied West Bank, RIA Novosti reported.
Last Sunday Palestinians voiced their disappointment that the Middle East Quartet of negotiators, which met on February 5 in Germany, refused to heed their call for unilateral statehood and failed to take a strong stance on Israel's settlement construction.
The quartet - the UN, the U.S., the EU and Russia - met on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference amid ongoing pro-democracy protests in Egypt and discussed the current impasse facing the Palestinian-Israeli search for peace.