Abbas says no meeting with Netanyahu in Moscow planned

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday that a proposed meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Moscow will not go ahead.

The two leaders were due to meet on Friday, but Abbas says that an aide to the Israeli prime minister has suggested postponing the talks.

"Netanyahu's representative proposed to delay this meeting to a later date. So the meeting will not happen, but I am ready and I declare again that I will go to any meeting," Abbas said at a joint press conference in Warsaw with Polish President Andrzej Duda.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi recently said that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to host an Israeli-Palestinian summit to revive peace talks.

Abbas's office previously said that Palestinians are ready to participate in any peace initiative aimed at a "comprehensive and fair solution".

But Palestinian leaders also say years of negotiations with Israelis have not ended the occupation of the West Bank, and they have more recently pursued an international strategy.

They have previously said an Abbas-Netanyahu meeting would lead nowhere without a freeze on Israeli settlement building, the release of Palestinian prisoners and a deadline for an end to the occupation.

Peace efforts have been at a standstill since a US-led initiative collapsed in April 2014.

The last substantial public meeting between Abbas and Netanyahu is thought to have been in 2010, though there have been unconfirmed reports of secret meetings since then.