Over 50 Arab media outlets have been actively covering an international conference on the Middle East settlement in Jordan.
The "Middle East 2020: Is a Comprehensive Settlement Possible?" forum was organized by Russian News & Information Agency RIA Novosti and the Russian Council for Foreign and Defense Policy within the framework of the Valdai International Discussion Club.
"This is perhaps the first large-scale conference on the Middle East that Russia has organized in recent years," Al Jazeera said.
The opinion of the popular Arab television channel was shared by the majority of regional news outlets, which stressed the prominence of participating experts from a number of countries and the good organization of the event.
Observers explain the interest in the forum on the part of the Arab media could be rooted to the idea that a collective analysis of the deadlock between Israel and the PNA could be used to find peaceful solutions to the crisis.
Russian academician Yevgeny Primakov has been enjoying the most popularity with the Arab media covering the forum.
However, a number of representatives of local media outlets said they were annoyed with the presence of a large Israeli delegation at the forum, which also forced a number of Iranian and other Arab journalists to leave the venue.
Politicians, experts, researchers and journalists from the PNA, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Turkey, Russia, Britain, the United States and France were invited to participate.
CAIRO, December 22 (RIA Novosti)
