A Mideast summit in Moscow could bolster Russia`s prestige and please Arab nations such as Syria, but progress would depend heavily on the actions of Israel and the Palestinians, analysts said Thursday. Moscow has offered to host a follow-up to the peace conference held this week in Annapolis, Md. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the idea "received support" during the summit, but stopped short of saying it was definite. He said the timing was not yet clear. An official with the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, said a Moscow meeting "could happen as early as February." The official spoke in Israel on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the subject. A conference in Moscow would fit in with President Vladimir Putin`s efforts to restore Russia`s global clout and further burnish his image at home - particularly before March 2 presidential elections in which he is barred from seeking a third term. "Putin has been doing everything possible to prove to the world - and not least to his own people - that Russia is a great power that has risen up from its knees" and opposes U.S. dominance, said Georgy Mirsky, a Mideast expert and professor at Moscow`s Institute of World Economy and International Relations. Putin has sought to strengthen Russia`s role in Mideast peacemaking, visiting both Israel and the West Bank in 2005. Russia, whose close ties with Syria go back to the Soviet era, has long called for a broad conference including Israel`s neighboring Arab states, whose support is considered vital to any peace agreement. A meeting in Moscow would likely train a sharper focus on Syria. But it is far from clear whether such a gathering would take peace efforts further than the meetings in the United States, where Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reiterated their desire to reach a peace settlement by the end of next year. "I don`t see any real leverage" in Moscow, Mirsky said. "I can`t imagine what card could be played here that wasn`t played in Annapolis." "A heck of a lot of effort will be needed from both sides" to make progress toward a settlement, he said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov acknowledged that difficulty on his way back from the U.S. meeting. He said plans for the Moscow meeting would be made "taking into account first of all the progress of the direct work between the Palestinians and Israelis," the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted him as saying. Galia Golan-Gild, an Israeli expert on Soviet and Russian policy in the Middle East, said Putin has nothing to offer to further the peace process and is pushing the conference to appear influential in the region. "Putin very clearly wants to be considered a superpower like the Americans," she said. Moscow could do very little to put pressure on Syria to further peace negotiations over the Golan Heights, which Israel conquered and annexed in the 1967 war, Golan-Gild said. Still, she said, Israel would attend the conference if it was designed as a follow-up to Annapolis with U.S. approval. Olmert`s office said there were several proposals for conferences and that it had not yet responded to any of them. But an Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said Olmert opposes follow-up summits. Olmert wants direct talks between Israel and Syria, and does not see the purpose of anything else, the official said. The Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta quoted Hamas deputy leader Moussa Abu Marzouk as saying that "any attempts to solve Mideast problems outside the region, whether in Annapolis or Moscow, cannot bring real progress."