US envoy Mitchell to meet Palestinian leaders

Mr Barak (r) warned of a possible "apartheid regime" US Middle East envoy George Mitchell is due to meet Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, a day after a marathon four-hour session with Israel's prime minister. He reportedly stressed "unshakeable" US commitment to Israeli security, to calm Israeli fear about US pressure over its settlements and a Palestinian state. He will meet Palestinian Authority leaders in Ramallah in the West Bank. Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu will give a major foreign policy speech on Sunday. He has not backed a two-state solution. The Palestinian Authority says it will not return to negotiations with Israel unless it freezes Jewish settlement activity in the West Bankand openly backs a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr Mitchell is visiting in the wake of US President Barack Obama'skeynote speech in Cairo last week. We come here to talk not as adversaries in disagreement but as friends in discussion George Mitchell US envoy to Middle East Israeli outposters vow to stay Mr Obama called for a "new beginning" between Muslims and the US and described the Palestinians' situation under in exile in neighbouring countries and under Israeli occupation as "intolerable". Amid fears among some Israelis that the new US administration is taking an unusually harsh line towards Israel, Mr Mitchell said he came to talk "not as adversaries in disagreement but as friends in discussion". He said the US was striving for "a Palestinian state, side by side in peace and security with the Jewish state of Israel". Mr Netanyahu has refused to endorse a peace process aimed at the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state, but has called on the Palestinians to recognise Israel as a Jewish state. His office described Monday's meeting with Mr Mitchell as "friendly" and "positive". Ambitious goal Amid speculation that the prime minister may back a two-state solution on Sunday, centre-left Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barakwarned that failure to reach such an agreement would result either in a state that was no longer Jewish, or an "apartheid regime". Benjamin Netanyahu is understood to back Palestinian self-rule in an entity which has no army and does not control its own airspace or borders. President Obama seems to hope he can achieve a historic Middle East settlement within his first term and this ambitious goal puts him on a collision course with Mr Netanyahu's government, BBC Middle East correspondent Paul Wood reports from Jerusalem. The immediate clash, however, will come over the issue of Jewish settlements built on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 war, our correspondent says. Mr Obama has said more clearly than any US president for a long time that settlement building must stop, while Mr Netanyahu is sticking to the established Israeli formula that there should be "natural growth" in existing settlements. After Israel and the West Bank, Mr Mitchell is to head to Lebanon before visiting Syria on Friday and Saturday as part of increased diplomatic engagement by the Obama government with Damascus.