George Mitchell's Middle East tour stresses U.S. administration's resolve to reach overall solution to Arab-Israeli conflict

Jordan monarch asserts to Mitchell importance of accelerating peaceful solution

U.S. envoy says no solution at Lebanon's expense

Mitchell opens with Assad doors to dialogue with Syria

Mitchell's talks in Cairo revolve around Egyptian vision to broker peaceful solution

Solana conveys to EU from region positions regarding settlement track

Jordan's King Abdullah urged Israel and the Palestinians to build on the momentum generated by U.S. President Barack Obama's peace drive to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"The U.S. President's stances are creating a positive environment that needs to be built on by all the parties to reach a comprehensive and permanent solution to the conflict," a palace statement quoted the monarch telling George Mitchell, Obama's special envoy to the Middle East.

"The U.S. role is crucial in the efforts to reach peace and attain stability in the region," he told Mitchell, adding that Obama's address on June 4 to the Muslim world from Cairo "embodied important messages," including the endorsement of a two-state solution.

The two-state solution, which is backed by Arab states but not by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was the only way to bring a lasting peace, the monarch said.

"The setting up of an independent Palestinian state based on a two-state solution is the only path to attaining peace and stability in the region," the monarch was quoted as saying.

Netanyahu has not publicly endorsed Palestinian statehood and has said construction will continue in existing settlements in the occupied West Bank.

King Abdullah also told Mitchell Israel must end settlement building and stop confiscating Arab property in East Jerusalem, seen as the future capital of a Palestinian state, and end efforts to annex lands occupied in the 1967 War.

Mitchell, on the latest leg of his mission on a tour that takes him also to Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, said he discussed with the monarch how "to bring a swift renewal of peace talks," based on a 2003 peace road map that commits Israel to halting settlements expansion and Palestinians to reining in militants.

Mitchell conferred with Jordan's King Abdullah II on the prospects of re-launching peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians and said Washington was committed to "comprehensive" peace in the Middle East.

"As President Obama said in Cairo, we are committed to reaching comprehensive peace in the region," Mitchell was quoted by the official Petra news agency as saying in a written statement.

He referred to Obama's speech to the Islamic world from Cairo last week when he reiterated his support for the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Mitchell said he discussed with King Abdullah "means of reinvigorating the peace process and finding the perspective through which the negotiations should be re-launched."

"At the outset, both Israelis and Palestinians should honor their commitments under the roadmap, while this effort should be backed and built upon by all states concerned with the establishment of peace, including the United States, the Europeans and the Arabs," he added.

King Abdullah praised the "positive attitudes and important messages included in Obama's speech in Cairo, particularly his support for the two-state solution and building up relations between the United States and both the Arab and Islamic worlds, based on mutual respect and common interests," according to a royal court statement.

"The president's stands have created a positive environment which requires that all parties cooperate in efforts aimed at finding a comprehensive and durable settlement in the region," the monarch said.

He urged "immediate moves to re-launch the negotiations which should be based on a clear plan and lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in accordance with the two-state formula, as the sole way for maintaining peace and stability in the region."

Mitchell made a stopover in Amman on his way from Cairo to Beirut in the course of a regional tour that also included visits to Israel and the Palestinian territories. He is also scheduled to visit Syria.

In the Lebanese capital Beirut, Mitchell called for the creation of a Palestinian state as part of Washington's comprehensive regional peace strategy, while assuring Lebanese leaders that such a deal would not come at Lebanon's expense. Mitchell's trip to Lebanon coincided with a visit by the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who during a two-day stay is scheduled to meet with a number of political figures including Hezbollah parliamentarian Hussein Hajj Hassan.

Mitchell, a seasoned envoy and former US Senate majority leader, traveled to Beirut as part of regional tour which included stops in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Egypt and Jordan.

"President Obama remains committed to actively and aggressively seeking comprehensive peace in the Middle East. This includes supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state as a homeland for the Palestinian people as soon as possible," Mitchell said after meeting with President Michel Sleiman.

Mitchell said Lebanon would have a key role in any regional deal, adding: "Clearly there can be no lasting solution reached at Lebanon's expense and we look forward to continuing to work with Lebanon to build this solution."

The special envoy also met with Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh and MP Saad Hariri before traveling to Syria.

Hariri's March 14 coalition decisively won Lebanon's parliamentary elections and Mitchell said Washington was looking forward to working with the new government.

"These elections were an important milestone for this country. The United States remains steadfast in its support for a sovereign, free, and independent Lebanon," he said. "We look forward to continuing to build our strong bilateral relations, to working with the new government," he added.

Mitchell is one of several high-ranking officials to visit Lebanon in recent months, and his trip comes only days after the elections won by the March 14 coalition. US Vice President Joe Biden visited the country last month ahead of the vote, weeks after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton paid a high-profile visit.

Both Biden and Clinton had warned that if the Hezbollah-led opposition won the June 7 polls US assistance to Lebanon would be revaluated, but with the March 14 victory relations are likely to remain strong.

Mitchell met with Solana at the Beirut International Airport, where the pair reportedly had a closed door meeting before Mitchell traveled to Syria.

Solana's visit to Lebanon is also aimed at kick-starting stalled peace talks, and like Mitchell he met with Palestinian and Israeli leaders ahead of his trip to Beirut.

Solana met with Sleiman, Salloukh, Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun and Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt.

At the airport, he was reported as saying that serious efforts are under way "to deepen the relations between Lebanon and the EU, which has always supported the country."

After his meeting with Jumblatt, he noted his willingness to meet with all major political players, voicing the hope that the elections would open "a new page in Lebanese political life." Lebanon "is close to hearts," Solana said, adding that the EU was "happy" with the elections.

In Damascus, Mitchell said Damascus had an integral role to play in Washington's efforts to secure Middle East peace, after meeting Syrian President Bashar Assad. Mitchell, the highest-ranking US official to visit Syria since President Barack Obama took office in January, met Assad on the last leg of a regional tour to push Obama's agenda of stepped-up peace efforts.

"The president and secretary of state have made clear that we seek peace between the Palestinians and Israelis, between Syria and Israel, between Lebanon and Israel and full normalization between Israel and its Arab neighbors," Mitchell said in a statement after the meeting. "The peace we seek is truly comprehensive."

The United States wants to move without delay, he said echoing remarks made earlier this week in Occupied Jerusalem.

"We are well aware of the many difficulties that lie ahead. Yet we share an obligation to create conditions for negotiations to begin promptly and end successfully.

"It is in the interests of all who seek peace - Americans, Europeans, Arabs, Israelis and others - to support this effort through tangible steps," Mitchell said.

For his part, Assad said that dialogue "must be serious and constructive and based on respect and mutual interests," Syria's official SANA news agency reported.

And he reiterated Syria's demand that the price of peace must include a full Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Golan Heights, which Israel captured in 1967.

The new Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled that out.

Washington is hoping, however, that Syria will resume peace talks with Israel, after four rounds of indirect Turkish-brokered contacts last year.

"Syria has an integral role to play in reaching comprehensive peace," Mitchell said after what he described as "substantive discussions" with Assad.

"We seek to build on this effort to establish a relationship based on mutual respect and mutual interest. The United States looks forward to this continued dialogue."

Syria expressed readiness to resume preliminary contacts with Israel on re-launching peace talks that have faltered in the past over the fate of the Golan Heights.

Mitchell, on his first visit to Damascus, was accompanied by Jeffrey Feltman, the acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, who visited Damascus twice since January.

The two arrived from Beirut, where Mitchell pledged the United States would not sacrifice Lebanon as it seeks to reach a peace deal.

Mitchell, an architect of the Northern Ireland peace deal, has already visited Israel, the Occupied West Bank, Egypt and Jordan.

Meanwhile, a US Embassy official told AFP an American military delegation had talks with officials in Damascus shortly before Mitchell's arrival.

The talks were "positive and constructive," the source said, without elaborating.

Damascus and Washington have always had strained ties and they deteriorated after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Relations worsened following the 2005 assassination of Lebanon's former Premier Rafik Hariri.

Washington recalled its ambassador in February 2005 following Hariri's murder. The assassination has been widely blamed on Syria - Lebanon's former powerbroker - but Damascus has categorically denied any involvement.

The United States has also imposed sanctions on Syria since 2004 over charges that it was a state sponsor of terrorism.

Mitchell arrived in Cairo from Israel and the Palestinian Territories, reiterating Washington’s position that a Palestinian state was the only viable answer to the Middle East conflict.

“We are working hard to achieve our objective, a comprehensive peace in the Middle East, including a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel”, Mitchell told reporters.

This includes “peace between Israel and its other immediate neighbors and full normalization of relations between Israel and all of the Arab nations as contemplated by the Arab peace initiative”, he said.

The 2002 initiative, backed by all 22 members of the Arab League, offers Israel full normalization in return for a withdrawal from territory occupied in the 1967 war, a Palestinian state and an equitable solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.

“As President [Barack] Obama said in Cairo just last week, the Arab states have an important role to play... We regard the Arab peace initiative as an important proposal that we are trying to integrate into our effort.

“Proposing the initiative was just the beginning. It brings with it responsibilities to join in taking meaningful steps and important actions that will help us move towards our objective.”

The heat is on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from within his own party to resist US pressure and not utter the words “Palestinian state” in a keenly-awaited policy speech.

“The expression Palestinian state should not be used”, said Likud MP Miri Regev, echoing the sentiment of several other members of Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party ahead of a speech on June 14.

To date, the hawkish prime minister has not endorsed the concept of a Palestinian state and has defied US pressure to freeze construction activity in West Bank settlements that are home to more than 280,000 Israelis.

Netanyahu hopes, however, that his landmark speech at Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University will help ease the mounting tension in relations with the United States, Israel’s prime ally.

But he faces a delicate balancing act if he is to avoid infuriating his partners in the governing center-right coalition, which is divided between those who reject a two-state solution, and those, like Defense Minister and Labor chief Ehud Barak, who support it.

Regev insisted Obama cannot force decisions upon the Israeli government.

“The US pressure is mainly psychological; one should not forget that the president is not the only one in the United States, there’s the Congress and the Senate, which support Israel”, she said.

Also among those pressing Netanyahu to steer clear of the concept of a Palestinian state is Benny Begin, a minister without portfolio and son of former Premier Menachem Begin.

“If the only solution is two states for two peoples, then there is no solution,” he said.

Begin insisted that the Palestinians were not after a two-state solution but wanted a “two-stage solution at the end of which there would be a single PLO-Hamas state”.

On June 10, eight Likud MPs met with Netanyahu to try to convince him not to mention the words “two states” in his speech.

“We are here to ask you not to establish the Palestinian state at Bar Ilan University on Sunday”, MP Danny Danon said at the meeting, according to Israeli media.

Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau from the far-right Israel Beitenu party insisted that in any case Israel “has no Palestinian partner with whom to negotiate.”

“In the Gaza Strip, there is some kind of a terrorist state in the hands of Hamas, while [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] does not control the Arabs” in the West Bank, Landau said.

Netanyahu also faces pressure not to cave in to US demands that he order a freeze on all settlement construction activity in the West Bank, something to which Israel committed itself under the 2003 international peace road map.

The premier was to meet with representatives of the 280,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, according to army radio.

Visiting EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who was to meet Netanyahu later in the day, urged the premier to commit to the concept of a Palestinian state being created alongside Israel.

According to Haaretz newspaper, Netanyahu was to announce his government’s adoption of the road map and the two-state solution while rejecting a settlement freeze and insisting Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Visiting EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana urged Netanyahu to commit to a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.

“I would like to hear a speech in which there’s a commitment of the government to the two-state solution, a commitment of the government on the question of settlements and a commitment to re-initiate relations with the Palestinians”, Solana told journalists.

“This is what we expect to hear and I am sure that we will hear something of that nature”, said Solana, ahead of a meeting with the premier.

Talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were also on Solana’s agenda.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Israel was bound to agree to a two-state solution in the Middle East because there is “no other choice”, during a television interview.

“Israel will agree to a two-state solution because it has no other choice,” he told Egyptian television in an interview.

“I told Netanyahu there is no choice, the two-state solution is bound to happen”, he said, adding that solving the Palestinian question was key to resolving other conflicts in the region.

“Any peace process for the Palestinian question means peace and stability for the entire region”, he said.

Over the past few months tensions between the United States and its staunchest ally have risen to levels not seen in 20 years as Washington presses Netanyahu to publicly back the principle of a Palestinian state and freeze all settlement activity on occupied land.

In a recent speech in Cairo, Obama repeated his call for a complete halt to Israeli settlements and said the creation of a Palestinian state was the only solution to the conflict.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana called on Israel to seek security through peace while warning that future talks with the European Union would depend on "Israel's behavior."

"What's important is to work to convince Israel that its security will be better guaranteed with peace and I think that President Obama clearly explained this in his speech and when he met the Israeli prime minister is Washington," Solana told journalists in Cairo.

US President Barack Obama has been seeking to restart the stalled peace process since taking office in January, with his envoy George Mitchell having just toured the region and reaffirmed US support for a two-state solution.

"There is currently an identical approach shared by us and the new US administration concerning the Middle East's problems and the way to act to resolve these problems," Solana said following talks with Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit.

Political dialogue between the EU and Israel would continue, Solana added, "but it depends on Israel's behavior." Solana has previously hailed a speech by Obama in Cairo on June 4 as opening a "new page" in relations with the Arab-Muslim world and resolving the Middle East conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to unveil his Mideast peace policy, but observers do not expect him to bow to US pressure and back a Palestinian state, the cornerstone of international efforts to end the decades-old conflict.

In Cairo, Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa said there is a positive atmosphere created by the new U.S. administration.

Moussa told reporters after meeting European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Javier Solana, "the new U.S. administration led by President Obama pursues achieving peace in the Middle East."

"Now, there is an open window that we must seize to establish a Palestinian state and end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," said Moussa.

Moussa stressed that there is a real opportunity to achieve peace in the region and the Arabs should seize the opportunity.

"There is an international consensus on the two-state solution," he added.

Obama told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 18 to freeze all settlement construction activities, including the "natural growth" of the existing ones, while asking Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on May 28 to halt the incitement of anti-Israeli sentiments, in a bid to clear the atmosphere in the region.

Meanwhile, Solana said that he has informed Moussa of his visits to Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories, adding that these visits aimed at pushing the peace process in the region.

Mitchell reiterated a prompt resumption and early conclusion of Middle East peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis.

After his meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit, Mitchell said that the U.S president and secretary of state have made U.S. policy clear as they were working hard to achieve the objective of comprehensive peace in the Middle East, including a Palestinian state side by side and in peace with Israel.