Jerusalem - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Friday welcomed US efforts to relaunch Mideast peace talks "as soon as possible," ahead of a first visit to Israel by Washington's top diplomat Hillary Clinton since Netanyahu took office in March. Hopes were dim for a breakthrough during Clinton's weekend visit, as US officials have failed thus far to broker a compromise on the terms of renewing the negotiations.
US Secretary of State Clinton planned to travel from Pakistan to the United Arab Emirates capital Abu Dhabi for talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday, US embassy sources in Islamabad confirmed.
She was expected in Israel on Sunday for several hours of talks, without spending the night, Kurt Hoyer, a spokesman for the US embassy in Tel Aviv, said, although he added the exact details of the visit had yet to be worked out.
President Barack Obama's special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, arrived in Israel Thursday to prepare for Clinton's visit.
Meeting Netanyahu in Jerusalem Friday before heading to Abu Dhabi to join Clinton, Mitchell called a regional peace a "common objective."
"I look forward to our discussions, and the discussions with Secretary of State Clinton to try to re-launch the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians as soon as possible," Netanyahu said in a brief statement to journalists.
Since Netanyahu formed his largely hardline government, Abbas has set three conditions for renewing the negotiations - the Netanyahu government should endorse the two-state solution, accept a complete freeze of Israeli construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and pick up the talks from where they left off with the previous Israeli government of former centrist premier Ehud Olmert.
Netanyahu has met the first demand, expressing support for a Palestinian state, albeit a demilitarized one, in a key-note policy address in June. But he has refused a total settlement freeze, vowing that building in Jewish neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem - which he has called part of Israel's united capital - would continue, as would the construction of under 3,000 homes within existing settlement blocks already in the pipeline.
Observers say that with the Palestinians heading for elections early next year, Abbas is unable to appear weak and in no position to lower his demands. They say his standing was badly damaged by his inability to turn down Obama's invitation to a September 22 summit with Netanyahu in New York, even though his demands for a total settlement freeze had not been met.
More damage came when, yielding to US and Israeli pressure, he briefly agreed to - and then backtracked on - the postponement of a UN vote on a report severely criticizing Israel's Gaza war of last winter.
Abbas last week issued a decree setting January 24 as the date for Palestinian presidential and parliamentary elections. But the rival, radical Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza has vowed not to cooperate. It wants elections to be held only as part of a - long held-up - inter-Palestinian reconciliation deal.
Netanyahu's spokesman, Mark Regev, would not confirm that the Israeli leader suggested another series of "goodwill gestures" for Abbas in his meeting with Mitchell, so that Clinton would be able to present these to the moderate Palestinian president.
Clinton would then try to convince Abbas to return to the negotiating table, but Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to the Israeli media, said they believed the chances were not high. "It's not we who are the problem, but the Palestinians, who are setting preconditions," one high-ranking official said.
Israel Radio reported that the goodwill measures included the removal of several more military roadblocks in the West Bank.
"Challenges remain," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly conceded, while announcing the Clinton visit Thursday.
Clinton had to report back to Obama last week on the month-long intensive mediation effort to revive the peace talks by late October, and told the president there was still "a lot of work that needed to be done," Kelly said.
