"...Blah blah blah blah.
Or so one might have thought.
But as this week's dinner meeting at the State Department stretched on well past two hours, something extraordinary happened. Or rather, didn't happen. The so-called Middle East Quartet— Clinton, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton—who gathered around the table with Quartet Envoy former British prime minister Tony Blair, could not even agree amongst themselves what to say in a statement. And so they didn't issue one, blaming the "significant gaps" that still exist between the parties. That would be the parties to the conflict, the Israelis and the Palestinians, who weren't even in the room.
So what happened?
Lavrov, speaking at the Russian embassy Tuesday, did little to dispel the perception the meeting was a flop, signaling growing international divisions over how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Adding urgency to the long-vexing issue: Palestinian plans to seek statehood recognition at the UN in September, bypassing negotiations with the Israelis altogether if new talks can't be resumed.
The Quartet meeting wasn't a total loss, Lavrov demurred, when asked about it, adding: "For one, the wine was very good." ..."
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