Russia, Libya positively assess Israel's decision to withdraw its troops from Arafat's HQ

In their telephone talk on September 30, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Igor Ivanov and his Libyan counterpart Abd al-Rahman Shalgam positively assessed the decision of Israel to withdraw its troops from the headquarters of head of the Palestinian National Authority Yasser Arafat in Ramallah, the information by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, received by RIA Novosti on Tuesday, says.

As the document notes, in the course of the talk Igor Ivanov and secretary of the General People's Committee for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Abd al-Rahman Shalgam "declared to be for fulfilling all the resolutions of the UN Security Council concerning overcoming the current crisis in Palestinian-Israeli relations". They also backed "the resumption of the movement towards the settlement of the Arabo-Israeli conflict." The Ministers stressed that "only positive steps by the Israelis and Palestinians to meet each other's stands can help normalise the situation around the Palestinian territories and restore the negotiating process".

At the same time, as the document of the Foreign Ministry of Russia notes, Ivanov and Shalgam discussed the situation which has arisen around Iraq.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia informed the head of the foreign-policy agency of the Libyan Jamahiriya about "the efforts the Russian side has been making to ensure earliest return of the international inspectors to Iraq and to resolve the problems which have emerged by political means on the basis of the existing resolutions of the UN Security Council", the message reads.