US envoy hopes for early relaunch of Mideast peace talks

George MitchellJerusalem  - US President Barack Obama's special envoy to the Middle East said Thursday he hoped his latest shuttle mission in the region would edge Israelis and Palestinians closer toward a rapid revival of long-stalled peace talks.

"We're going to continue with our efforts to achieve an early relaunch of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians," Senator George Mitchell told reporters before a private meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem.

But the sense of urgency relayed by the Obama envoy was in sharp contrast to the views of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who called it unrealistic to strive for any final peace agreement with the Palestinians in the coming years.

"Whoever thinks that we can reach an inclusive agreement with the Palestinians that would bring an end to the conflict in the coming years, just doesn't understand reality and is distributing illusions," said Lieberman, of the far-right Israel Beiteinu party, the largest coalition partner of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hardline but more mainstream Likud.

Lieberman spoke to Israel Radio ahead of his meeting with Mitchell at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem early Thursday afternoon.

The ultra-nationalist believes in conflict management, rather than conflict solving, often citing examples elsewhere in the world, but Palestinians regard his mantra that the status quo should be maintained and the conflict contained as foot-dragging and an attempt to put off the creation of a Palestinian state.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak, of the left-leaning Labour Party, on the other hand, told Mitchell when he met him in the late afternoon that "we must engage in real negotiations with the Palestinians" and "no obstacle is impassable."

It is yet unclear whether Netanyahu shares his foreign minister's views. The premier has said he wants an immediate revival of peace negotiations without preconditions, but as ruled out concessions on the crucial negotiating issue of Jerusalem, sparking Palestinian suspicion and scepticism.

Starting his latest round of talks by meeting Peres in the morning, Mitchell acknowledged "there will be problems and difficulties along the road" but said the Obama administration remained "deeply and firmly committed toward achieving a comprehensive peace" in the Middle East.

He called an early relaunch of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations "essential."

The talks were broken off late last year, after centrist former premier Ehud Olmert resigned to fight corruption allegations, sending Israel into early elections that saw Netanyahu return to power after 10 years.

Mitchell's visit is the first since Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met at a three-way summit hosted by Obama in New York on September 22, the first parley between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders since Netanyahu took office in March.

It was held despite a failure by the parties to reach an agreement on a freeze of Israeli construction in West Bank settlements.

The US mediator had attempted in vain to seal a last-minute deal on the issue in a previous round of shuttle diplomacy between Jerusalem and Ramallah just before the summit. In its absence, Obama had been unable to announce a long hoped for revival of peace talks.

Instead, he announced intense contacts in a bid to revive the peace process later this autumn. Obama has said he wants Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to report back to by mid-October on the US effort to get an agreement on the terms for reviving the talks.

But Abbas has since taken flak for attending the New York summit without his pre-condition of a total settlement freeze being met.

Israeli media cited a senior US official saying Washington's demand for a moratorium of Israeli construction in the occupied West Bank was "not off the table."

"Our position on settlements has not changed," the official said. He insisted that media reports to the contrary had been misleading.

Mitchell's latest visit to the region also comes as Abbas is under unprecedented internal pressure over his decision to bow to Israeli and American pressure and ask for the deferral until March of a UN vote on a report about last winter's Gaza war.

The report by South African judge Richard Goldstone recommends that Israel and the radical Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza be brought before the International Criminal Court in the Hague, unless they launch credible investigations of their own into "strong evidence" that they committed war crimes in and ahead of the war.

Mitchell, who landed in Tel Aviv late Wednesday, was expected to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Friday, before travelling to the nearby West Bank city of Ramallah for talks with Abbas.  dpa