MOSCOW, Jan 30 (AFP) - Russia is hoping that by hosting negotiations this week to find peace in the Middle East it will be propelled back into a position of influence on the region, political analysts said Sunday.
Israel resumed talks with the Palestinians on Sunday at a secret location near Jerusalem, but talks with Syria are stalled and were further complicated by the killing Sunday of a pro-Israeli militia leader in Lebanon.
Moscow will host the resumption of the multilateral negotiations on Monday and Tuesday, aimed at boosting Arab-Israeli cooperation on a broad range of issues from arms control to the environment.
Some 40 countries will attend the Moscow talks, including Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Egypt, Norway, Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia - representing the Gulf states - and Tunisia - on behalf of North Africa. European Union representatives will also take part.
Russia, having conceded that it cannot exert the same amount of influence as the United States, wants to show that it can still bring clout to the negotiating table, despite its own domestic problems.
"Russia's main interest is to reinforce its own role in the negotiations process," said political analyst Andrei Markov.
But with both the Israeli and Palestinians admitting that there is little hope of meeting a mid-February deadline for a framework accord on the issues at the heart of their decades-old conflict, Russia may have trouble looking good at the talks.
"There is a contradiction between the willingness to do it and the possibility of doing it at the current time," Markov added.
Russia has been isolated on the international stage by its bloody military onslaught in the Muslim republic of Chechnya. Moscow has rebuffed all condemnation of the campaign, telling critics that it regards Chechnya as an internal affair, despite the fact that the Chechens waged a three-year war (1994-1996) for autonomy.
Under such circumstances, Russia is in a poor position to "put pressure" on the conflicting sides in the Middle East, Markov said. But with the negotiations poised as they are, "the co-sponsors must play the role of world policeman," he added.
Relations between Russia and Israel have warmed noticeably since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but Moscow must balance that with a desire to avoid threatening its friendships in the Arab world, a western diplomat said.
A few months ago, Russian analysts suggested that Moscow was more concerned about holding on to its position as a talks' sponsor than with trying to influence the debates in a meaningful way.
Since then, the arrival, first as prime minister then as acting president, of Vladimir Putin has led to a stronger diplomatic line.
Putin, a hawkish former KGB man, has proved with Chechnya that he will not shirk from standing his ground against international pressure. He also knows that success in March's presidential elections is closely linked to the success of his troops in Chechnya.
Another western diplomat said the Middle East talks "offer Russia the chance to climb back into the saddle, if it wants to."
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan was encouraged after a meeting on Friday with Putin that the Russian leader would help to bring all the parties together to work towards peace.
And in December, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy made visits to Moscow, showing Russia's desire not to be frozen out of the process.
Levy returned home with a promise from his Russian counterpart, Igor Ivanov, that Russia would continue to play an active role.
