The peace process has stalled over Israel's refusal to halt settlements [AFP]

Mitchell, seeking to restart stalled peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, was due to travel to the nearby West Bank city of Ramallah later on Friday to meet Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.

"We're going to continue with our efforts to achieve an early relaunch of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians," Mitchell told reporters before a private meeting with Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, on Thursday.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were broken off late last year after Ehud Olmert, Netanyahu's predecessor, resigned amid corruption allegations, sending Israel into early elections that saw Netanyahu return to power after 10 years.

The Palestinians have insisted on a complete freeze of Israeli construction in the occupied West Bank before the peace process can resume.

'Peace impossible'

But Israel has not shown any signs of willingness to halt construction and Mitchell's latest visit to the region is a fresh attempt to revive the talks.

"Whoever says that it's possible to reach in the coming years a comprehensive agreement that means the end of conflict, that both sides sign up to the end of conflict, simply does not understand the reality," he told Israel Radio.

"I will tell him [Mitchell] clearly: there are many conflicts in the world that haven't reached a comprehensive solution and people have learned to live with this," he said, citing continuing land disputes in Cyprus, Nagorno-Karabakh and the Falkland Islands.

Mitchell's last visit to the region in September failed to seal a deal on the settlement freeze.

A three-way summit between Netanyahu, Abbas and Barack Obama, the US president, went ahead in New York in September without the US being able to announce a revival of the talks.

Obama announced instead that the three parties would begin intense contacts in a bid to revive the talks later this autumn, possibly by late October.

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