JERUSALEM - US President Barack Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East said Thursday he hoped his latest shuttle mission in the region would edge Israelis and Palestinians closer toward reviving long-stalled peace talks soon.

“We’re going to continue with our efforts to achieve an early relaunch of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians,” Senator George Mitchell told reporters before a private meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem.

He added this was an “essential step” toward achieving comprehensive peace in the region.

As part of his latest round of talks - the first since last month’s three-way summit in New York - Mitchell, who landed in Tel Aviv late Wednesday, was also scheduled to meet Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Defence Minister Ehud Barak in the afternoon.

On Friday Mitchell is expected to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, then travel to the nearby West Bank city of Ramallah for talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israeli media earlier cited a senior US official saying Washington’s demand for a moratorium of Israeli construction in the occupied West Bank was “not off the table”.

“Our position on settlements has not changed,” the official said. He insisted that media reports to the contrary had been misleading.

Mitchell’s visit is the first since Netanyahu and Abbas met at a three-way summit hosted by Obama in New York Sep 22.

That meeting was the first between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders since the hardline Netanyahu took office in March.

It was held despite a failure by the parties to reach an agreement on a freeze of Israeli construction in West Bank settlements.

Mitchell had attempted in vain to seal a last-minute deal on the issue in a previous round of shuttle diplomacy between Jerusalem and Ramallah just before the summit. In its absence, Obama had been unable to announce a long hoped for revival of peace negotiations.

The US official briefing Israeli reporters said he did not “foresee a breakthrough on this visit”, but again emphasised Obama’s “sense of urgency” and “impatience” with the current situation and that the president expected of the sides to move forward.

A new flare-up of tensions surrounding a disputed holy site in Jerusalem, and the heated debate about a UN report on last winter’s Gaza war had again demonstrated this urgency, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was quoted as saying.

Obama has said he wants Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to report back by mid-October on the US efforts to nudge the sides toward reviving peace talks.