United States special envoy George Mitchell held talks in Israel Thursday, meeting Israeli leaders for the first time since the new government of hardline premier Benjamin Netanyahu took office last month, dpa reported.
Mitchell opened his talks Thursday meeting Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem.
He was scheduled to meet Israel's controversial new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, of the ultra-nationalist Israel Beiteinu, coalition party later in the morning.
He was later to have dinner with Netanyahu. On Friday, the envoy of US President Barack Obama is expected to travel to the West Bank for talks with President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian officials.
Mitchell, who met Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv shortly after his arrival Wednesday evening, earlier - in Morocco - emphasized the Obama administration's determination to push for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks entered a hiatus at the end of last year, as Israel began an election period, and have not restarted.
Netanyahu, whose hawkish Likud party defeated the centrist Kadima party of Tzipi Livni, has refused explicitly to endorse a two-state solution to the conflict, which the international community and the Palestinians see as the end result of the negotiations.
Lieberman further confused the issue by publicly declaring void the so-called Annapolis process, which formed the basis of the nearly year-long negotiations. He said in an inauguration speech which stirred uproar that Israel would only accept the "road map," an internationally-sponsored, performance-based plan which ultimately too calls for a two-state solution, but which quagmired shortly after it was launched in 2003.
The Israeli Yediot Ahronot daily, quoting a senior White House official, reported Thursday that Obama wants to condition US support of Israel regarding Iran on the removal of Jewish settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank.
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