US special envoy George Mitchell will return to the Middle East next week on his first trip since Israel's new conservative government took office, the State Department said on Monday.
Mitchell will travel to the region starting April 13 and meet officials from Israel, the Palestinian territories, Egypt, the Gulf and North Africa.
The former US senator and veteran negotiator aims "to advance the goal of the two-state solution and comprehensive peace in the region", State Department spokesman Robert Wood said.
Mitchell last visited the region in late February before right-leaning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office following Israel's election.
Quartet envoy
Middle East envoy Tony Blair urged Israel's prime minister on Monday to resume Palestinian statehood talks in parallel with a push to boost the West Bank economy and to let Palestinians control more of their territory.
Blair met Netanyahu last week, laying out in broad terms how the "Quartet" of Middle East mediators - the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations - wants to see stalled peacemaking proceed.
"There is a great deal of scepticism out there," Blair told reporters after talks with Netanyahu.
Tasked by the Quartet with spearheading economic development in the occupied West Bank, Blair said providing Palestinians with greater freedom of movement was central to creating the foundations for statehood.
But the former British prime minister said he told Netanyahu that a "credible political negotiation for a two-state solution" should be conducted "in parallel" with that.
Marc Otte, the European Union's Middle East envoy, concurred: "You cannot change things on the ground without having a political perspective on what it is that we're doing." Netanyahu has been vague about renewing talks over thorny territorial issues, saying his priority was to focus instead on the creation of development zones and on ways to ease roadblocks and checkpoints that inhibit travel and trade in the West Bank.
Last week, Netanyahu's foreign minister, ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman, declared that negotiations over statehood borders, and the fate of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, launched at a US-sponsored conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in November 2007, had "no validity".
Otte, speaking to reporters in Jerusalem earlier on Monday, said that Annapolis was "binding" on Israel because it was endorsed by the UN Security Council.
"My view is that he [Netanyahu] does understand that, if the right context can be created for peace, the only lasting peace is based on a two-state solution," Blair said.
He said he told Netanyahu that in addition to improving economic conditions in the West Bank, it was essential security forces of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas progressively "take control of their own territory".
Otte said the focus should be on creating what he called "trade routes" that would make it easier for Palestinian businesses to transport their goods to market.
Blair also urged Netanyahu to ease Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, which Hamas Islamists seized in June 2007 after routing forces loyal to Abbas' secular Fateh faction.
Aides said Blair saw Israel's decision last year to give Abbas' US-trained security forces greater control over the northern West Bank city of Jenin as a model that could be applied to other parts of the territory.
The administration of US President Barack Obama plans to expand its training programme for Abbas' forces. Speaking in Turkey, on Monday, Obama said Washington "strongly supports the goal of two states, living side by side in peace and security".
Medvedev meets Abbas
President Dmitry Medvedev promised Monday that Russia would continue to work towards the establishment of a Palestinian state and to get the Mideast peace process back on track.
"We will, of course, continue to support the Middle East peace process and the establishment of the Palestinian state," Medvedev told visiting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Palestinian leader, who announced his trip to Russia last week after a hawkish new government led by Benjamin Netanyahu took office in Israel, told Medvedev that Moscow was central to the Palestinians in the peace process.
"We place very high value on coordinating all issues concerning the regional situation with the Russians and intend to continue this work in the future," Abbas said.
Russia, one of the four powers in the so-called Middle East Quartet sponsoring the peace process, has strong, traditional ties to the Arab world dating back to the Soviet era.
Last year, Moscow made a push to revive its role as a key negotiator in the conflict with ambitions to host a Middle East peace conference this year.
Abbas will also travel to country's Muslim region of Daghestan Tuesday, where he will be awarded an honorary doctorate, a spokesman for the Palestinian embassy told AFP.
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