UNITED NATIONS — Secretary-General Ban, who began a visit to Moscow yesterday, is helping his hosts by making statements on Kosovo and the Israeli-Palestinian Arab negotiations that could benefit Russian diplomacy, which the West at times has viewed as confrontational.

With Mr. Ban saying earlier this week that he supports the idea of convening a Middle East summit in Moscow “in the near future,” a senior Russian diplomat who requested anonymity told The New York Sun yesterday that Moscow is seeking to invite Palestinian Arabs to the parley who have been excluded from the American-led negotiations — a reference to Hamas.

The inclusion of Hamas, which America considers a terrorist group, is likely to raise further opposition to the Moscow summit in Washington and Jerusalem, where officials reportedly are cool to the Russian initiative. Meanwhile, news yesterday of an American counterproposal — for a meeting next month in Egypt, where President Bush will lead the signing of a treaty between Israeli and Palestinian Arab leaders — was eclipsed by the killing of two Israeli contractors who supplied fuel to Gaza.

Ahead of Mr. Ban’s two-day visit to Russia, which includes meetings with President Putin, President-elect Medvedev, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the secretary-general gave an interview to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti in which he urged all sides in Kosovo to refrain from “taking any unilateral measures which may provoke violence” and expressed his support for the proposed Middle East summit in Moscow.

Russia, an ally of Serbia, opposed Kosovo’s recent declaration of independence, while America and other European countries recognized the former Serb province as a new state. On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department declared its former office in Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, an embassy.

Moscow wants Mr. Ban to let Russia weigh in on any steps the United Nations takes on Kosovo, a European diplomat who briefed U.N. reporters yesterday on the condition of anonymity said. A Russian diplomat also told the Sun yesterday that he hoped Mr. Ban would stress “the rule of international law” in the Balkan region, a reference to Russia’s contention that Kosovo’s declaration of independence violated the law. The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — America, China, Britain, France, and Russia — have the power to veto the candidacy of a U.N. secretarygeneral, so if Mr. Ban wants to run for a second five-year term, he must take each country’s sensitivities into account. Russia in particular considers the United Nations, and the role it inherited from the Soviet Union as a permanent member of the council, a pillar of its foreign policy. “As a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, Russia believes that the role of this organization is unprecedented in the present-day world,” Mr. Medvedev told Mr. Ban.

In Jerusalem yesterday, officials declined to comment on a report that America is suggesting that a Middle East meeting be held next month in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Like the proposed Moscow meeting, such an initiative would be considered a follow-up to the Annapolis summit in November.

“With so many proposed followup meetings, it seems even those who initiated Annapolis have lost their way,” the foreign policy point man for Israel’s opposition Likud Party, Zalman Shoval, said.