(AFP) – Feb 2, 2009

PARIS (AFP) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy met US Middle East envoy George Mitchell on Monday, as the American completed his first regional drive to revive peace talks.

Sarkozy, who with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak helped broker a Gaza ceasefire last month, was to hold talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas later in the day.

President Barack Obama's envoy ended his Middle East tour Sunday after meetings in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Sarkzoy was also to meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani of Qatar, whose country brokered a peace accord between Lebanon's rival factions in May last year.

The French president has sought to carve out a greater role for Europe in the search for peace in the Middle East after the 22-day Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip that left 1,330 dead.

Mitchell, who was to have a working lunch with Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, was on a tour as a fragile ceasefire holds in Gaza.

Egypt and other regional powers are seeking to firm up the ceasefire. One Palestinian was killed on Monday in an Israeli air strike on militants who had fired mortars on southern Israel.

The 75-year-old former US senator on Friday said in Israel that Washington was committed to "actively and aggressively" seeking lasting peace in the Middle East but warned there would be further setbacks.

Before arriving in Riyadh, Mitchell met Jordan's King Abdullah II in Amman who urged Washington to resume its efforts to clinch a two-state settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

French officials said they planned to sound out Mitchell on the new administration's plan to bring the Gaza crisis to an end and revive Israeli-Arab peace talks.

The envoy, who helped broker peace in Northern Ireland in 1998, travels later Monday to London to brief the British government on his first round of meetings.

Abbas meanwhile will meet with National Assembly speaker Bernard Accoyer on Tuesday and with Kouchner before travelling to Strasbourg to address the European parliament on Wednesday.

The president of the Palestinian Authority will travel to Britain, Turkey, Poland and Italy later this week to discuss reconstruction efforts in Gaza following the Israeli offensive.

Abbas decided to cancel a visit to the Czech Republic, which currently holds the European Union presidency, to allow for more time to be spent in Cairo for truce talks.

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