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United States President Barack Obama is dispatching his envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, to Israel in order to hear official responses to U.S. demands for a halt to West Bank settlement building.
Mitchell will arrive for a two-day visit next week on Monday evening, during which he will visit both Jerusalem and Ramallah. He will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, with whom he will also discuss the premier's reluctance to declare support for a two-state solution.
According to a political source in Jerusalem, Mitchell is likely to also seek answers on matters raised during meeting meetings he held with Netanyahu's aides in London last week, where there was significant disagreement over settlement construction.
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Mitchell, who met with Defense Minister Ehud Barak over the same issues in Washington on Monday, will visit the Palestinian Authority and meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
It is still unclear whether the envoy will visit Syria for a meeting with its president, Bashar Assad, before or after the trip to Israel. Mitchell and his aides have been holding contacts with Syrian officials over the possibility of such a visit.
On Monday, the envoy told Barak that the U.S. was no longer willing to return to the understandings between the Sharon and Olmert governments and the Bush administration, which allowed continued settlement construction.
News of Mitchell's planned visit emerged Tuesday a day after Obama told a U.S. radio network in an interview that the U.S. would be more blunt in raising objections to Israel's settlement policies in the Palestinian territories than previous administrations.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1089832.html
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