Israeli FM to visit Moscow

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman will visit Moscow on December 9 to take part in a meeting of the bilateral inter-governmental commission. The commission will discuss various aspects of Russian-Israeli relations and cooperation, including in the energy sector. A source in the Israeli Embassy did not rule out that Lieberman might meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to Russia's (ITAR-TASS) News Agency. "Israel shows interest in signing a free trade agreement with the Customs Union [of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia]," the Embassy official said. Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich is the Russian co-chair of the commission. In 2012, Russian-Israeli trade turnover was about three billion US dollars and increased by 29% in the first eight months of this year. Russia's President Vladimir Putin has noted the intrinsic value of Russian-Israeli relations in the economic and humanitarian spheres. "Russian-Israeli relations have their intrinsic value and I hope we will discuss them today," he said at a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on November 20. Putin named a number of areas where the two countries had been successfully cooperating: energy, space, aviation, and nanotechnologies. Netanyahu said that relations between the two countries had been "on the rise" in recent years largely owing to Putin and expressed hope that his talks in Moscow would contribute to the maintenance of peace and security in the region and the world.