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US envoy starts Mideast tour amid Obama pessimism

22 January 2010 00:01 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Ziya Agazade â€“ APA. Washington’s Middle East envoy launched a new effort Thursday aimed at restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, just as President Barack Obama expressed pessimism about the prospects.

According to APA citing â€œAssociated Pressâ€, already complicating envoy George Mitchell’s mission was a new demand by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an Israeli military presence in the West Bank to stop weapons smuggling, even after formation of a Palestinian state.

Mitchell met late Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. No details of the discussions were released. Earlier, Mitchell saw Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and President Shimon Peres. As Mitchell began his mission, his boss, Obama, admitted he overreached in the Middle East.

In an interview with Time Magazine published Thursday, Obama said internal conflicts made it hard for the Israelis and Palestinians to restart talks, "and I think that we overestimated our ability to persuade them to do so when their politics ran contrary to that."

Obama concluded, "I think it is absolutely true that what we did this year didn’t produce the kind of breakthrough that we wanted and if we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high."
Before meeting Peres, Mitchell pledged to soldier on. He said Obama’s vision is a Palestinian state alongside Israel in peace. "We will pursue (that) until we achieve that objective," Mitchell said.

The envoy is set to meet with Palestinian officials in the West Bank on Friday.