Global Arab Network | Mitchell heads to Syria, US wants peace talks to resume soon

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Mitchell heads to Syria, US wants peace talks to resume soon

George Mitchell, The U.S. envoy for the Middle East, will visit Syria and Lebanon this week as part of the Obama administration's Arab-Israeli peace push, US official said today.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Mitchell would go to Beirut on Thursday and then visit the Syrian capital Damascus on Friday and Saturday, carrying out President Barack Obama's bid to get a "comprehensive peace" in the region.

Mitchell is currently in Israel, where he said Washington was seeking a swift renewal of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The United States would also like to see a resumption of Israeli-Syrian negotiations, which were halted at the end of last year after Israel's offensive in Gaza.

Syria expressed renewed readiness on Tuesday to resume preliminary contacts through Turkish go-betweens on re-launching US-sponsored peace negotiations with Israel.

Israel and the Palestinians

The US has said it wants Israel and the Palestinians to hold "immediate talks" towards "a comprehensive peace and normalisation of relations".

George Mitchell is aiming to lay the groundwork for those negotiations during his visit. It is his fourth visit to the region since taking the post.

Mitchell opened his meetings with Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, before travelling to Jerusalem to meet Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, and Shimon Peres, the president.

He will hold talks with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday.

"We all share an obligation to create the conditions for the prompt resumption and early conclusion of negotiations," Mitchell said before meeting Peres.

"We're now engaged in serious discussions with our Israeli and Palestinian and regional partners to support these efforts."

Before setting off for the region, Mitchell told reporters at a Palestinian donors' conference in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, that renewed talks between Israel and the Palestinians would serve "the security interests of the United States".

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Mitchell's trip was a follow-up to a speech to the Muslim world that Obama made in Cairo last week .

"This administration is committed to a broad-based comprehensive peace dealing with all the different players in the region and we decided it was an appropriate time for Senator Mitchell to go to Syria," Kelly said.

"This is a very high priority for this administration and we are going to pursue this vigorously in the coming months," he told reporters at the daily State Department briefing.

Settlement freeze

Mitchell has long advocated the need for a settlement freeze as necessary for any tangible progress on peacemaking.

"Israelis and Palestinians have a responsibility to meet their obligations under the roadmap," he said on Tuesday, referring to the 2003 agreement which requires the end of settlement construction.

But Israel, apparently unfazed, has continued to build or expand settlements that are considered illegal internationally, arguing that so-called natural expansion cannot be stopped.

Settlement construction has doubled since Israel recommitted to halting itn at the Annapolis conference 18 months ago and there are plans for 75,000 new housing units, one-third of which have already been approved.

Half a million Jews already live in settlement blocks in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

On Monday, Barack Obama, the US president, had a 20-minute phone call with Netanyahu.

The White House called Monday's talks "constructive" said Obama and "reiterated the principal elements of his Cairo speech, including his commitment to Israel's security".

Netanyahu's office said that the "discussions were positive and covered a range of subjects".

Netanyahu said he is ready to hold talks with Abbas, focusing on economic, security and political issues.

But Palestinians have rejected his proposed shift of focus away from territorial issues, whose complexity, Netanyahu has said, has frustrated US-backed attempts to reach a final peace deal.

Abbas has said renewed negotiations would be pointless unless Netanyahu first endorsed Palestinian statehood and halted the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem
(Reuters, AFP, )

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