U.S. President Barrack Obama's special envoy for the Middle East George Mitchell will visit Israel and the Palestinian territories this weekend in a bid to revive stalled regional peace talks, the State Department said on Thursday.
"George Mitchell ... will depart the United States tomorrow night," State Department spokesman PJ Crowley told reporters.
Mitchell's visit to the Middle East will begin on Sunday and last through Monday and Tuesday, Crowley said, adding that details were still being worked out.
Apart from Israel and the Palestinian territories, Mitchell may also visit other cities in the Middle East, according to Crowley.
The scheduled visit by Mitchell comes at the time when the Obama administration said last week that it regrets the reports of Israel's plans to approve additional Jewish settlement construction, saying continued settlement activity is "inconsistent" with Israel's commitment under the Roadmap peace initiative.
"The United State does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion and we urge that it stop. We are working to create a climate in which negotiations can take place, and such actions make it harder to create such a climate," the White House said in a statement.
Israel and the Palestinians resumed peace talks after a break of more than six years at an international conference in Annapolis, the United States, in November 2007, but the talks made little progress before being suspended amid the Gaza war in December 2008.
The suspension of Israel-Palestinian talks was attributed partly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to heed Washington's repeated demands that Israel halt all settlement activity on occupied Palestinian land.
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