U.S. Mideast envoy optimistic over talks soon

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. envoy George Mitchell said on Tuesday he hoped preliminary U.S. negotiations with all sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be complete within weeks and that full-blown talks could begin.

Mitchell, who just returned from his fourth trip to the region this year, gave no timetable for a resumption of peace talks and conceded the challenges ahead were huge and that the level of mistrust and hostility was high.

While not wanting to set a deadline for a process that had not even begun, Mitchell underlined what he said was a sense of urgency by Washington.

"I would not have taken this position if I did not believe that there was a realistic chance of reaching those objectives," said Mitchell, President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy, who helped broker peace in Northern Ireland.

"We hope to conclude the discussions in which we are now engaged very soon -- to me it's a matter of weeks, not months," he told reporters in his first Washington news conference since taking the envoy post in January.

Mitchell was in the Middle East last week meeting the Israelis and the Palestinians, who cut off peace negotiations after Israel's incursion into Gaza last December. He also visited Damascus for talks with Syria over the stalled peace process.

Israel's new envoy to Washington said on Tuesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was prepared to resume peace talks with the Palestinians that would cover core issues like borders and refugees.

But in an interview with Reuters, Ambassador Michael Oren cautioned that on the status of Jerusalem, also among the "core" issues in the peace process, Netanyahu had a firm position that the city must be the undivided capital of Israel.