November 28, 2007 (LPAC)--"The next peace summit between Israelis and Palestinians will be held in Moscow", Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is quoted by the Russian news agency, Interfax, as saying on Wednesday morning at Annapolis. Lavrov said the proposal had been greeted enthusiastically by the participants of the Annapolis meeting, though no specific date has been set.

The prospect of a major Moscow role in the follow-up to Annapolis is something that Lyndon LaRouche has anticipated in statements concerning the importance of Russian President Vladimir Putin's role in negotiating aspects of the peace policy since long before the Annapolis meeting took place. On October 19, just after Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met in Moscow, LaRouche evaluated the three-hour meeting between the two of them as follows: "It's very important. This is extremely important, because we know exactly what it is. The point is, that the question is Iran. The issue is,-- it involves everything, including the U.S. policy on this missile-defense thing. And so, what Putin is going for, is to get a package which is attractive to a number of people, and see what can fly from it. It's obvious." LaRouche also said that the Putin discussion with Olmert would determine whether the Israelis would go to Annapolis.

On Lavrov's statement about a followup meeting in Moscow, the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) reported that Lavrov also said that Russia would broker peace talks between Israel and its northern neighbors, i.e., Syria and Lebanon. JTA quotes Lavrov as saying, "This is crucial not only for the solution of all key problems in Palestinian-Israeli relations--I mean the border issue, refugees and the state of Jerusalem-- but also for approaching other spheres of the Middle East settlement, the Arab-Israeli conflict. I mean the Syrian and Lebanese areas."

Lavrov proposed a follow-up conference in Moscow in the spring of 2008. Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa supported this idea, and said that negotiations should be expanded to include Syria and Lebanon as well. Although the reports from Annapolis do not say it, the discussion of a potential Moscow conference on the Middle East has been appearing in the Israeli press as a venue for an Israeli-Syrian peace initiative.