Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is to meet...

The head of the Palestinian National Authority will meet Medvedev in Russia"s Black Sea resort of Sochi on January 26.

Russia, along with the UN, the U.S. and European Union, comprises part of the Middle East Quartet of intermediaries for peace efforts.

The previous meeting between the two leaders was held in Moscow in April 2009 and saw a discussion of Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts and Moscow"s plan to host a Middle East conference.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier in the day that Russia would maintain contacts with radical Islamic Palestinian group Hamas as part of efforts to revive Middle East talks.

Hamas kicked Abbas"s Fatah party out of the Gaza Strip enclave in the summer of 2007 following a series of armed clashes. Fatah now governs only in the West Bank. Egyptian-mediated attempts to achieve unity between the two groups have so far proven unsuccessful.

MOSCOW, January 22 (RIA Novosti)