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Quartet on Mission Impossible in Mideast Logjam

(Reuters) Tom Perry - World powers trying to revive peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians may be flogging a dead horse and their repeated failure is eroding what credibility they have left as mediators. Some political analysts argue it is now time for them to scale back their ambitions. With faint hope of a deal, would-be peacemakers may inevitably find themselves seeking to manage rather than resolve the generations-old conflict. The latest effort by the Middle East Quartet - meetings in Jerusalem on Wednesday to bring the parties to the same table for talks on a permanent peace deal - was arguably a failure before it began. "The Quartet is irrelevant because it is stuck on a road which is not leading anywhere," said Shlomo Avineri, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. "The Quartet is basically wrong-headed because it is avoiding realization that the attempt to bring the two sides together to negotiation about a final status agreement is wrong. It hasn't worked now for a long time," he said.
2011-10-28 00:00:00
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