France wants new Mideast Quartet meeting this year

PARIS (Reuters) - France, which holds the presidency of the European Union, said on Tuesday it wanted the Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators to meet again this year to continue efforts to keep Israeli-Palestinian peace talks alive.

At a meeting in Egypt on November 9 the Quartet -- composed of the EU, Russia, the United Nations and the United States -- strongly backed the talks launched at Annapolis, Maryland, nearly a year ago by U.S. President George W. Bush, even though few expect a deal to be reached this year as originally planned.

The talks have been hobbled from the start by violence and bitter disputes over Jewish settlement-building and the future of Jerusalem, and the process could fall apart amid political transitions in Israel and the United States.

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Frederic Desagneaux said Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner met the Quartet's envoy, Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on Tuesday.

"(The meeting served to) prepare, and already work on a future meeting of the Quartet which we would like to be able to hold by the end of the year in Paris," Desagneaux said.

France holds the rotating EU presidency until January 1.

Asked whether the Israelis and Palestinians would take part in the meeting, as they did on November 9 in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Desagneaux said: "That is a point which has not been decided on yet."

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Charles Dick)