WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama phoned Arab and Israeli leaders on his first full day in office Wednesday and picked a top Middle East envoy, showing he plans to act quickly to push for peace.
Obama, who took office Tuesday, had promised speedy action in the wake of a three-week Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip that ended at the weekend in a fragile truce.
The new president has asked former US senator and former Northern Ireland peacemaker George Mitchell, 75, to serve as Middle East envoy, a source close to the administration told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The source expected Mitchell s position to be announced shortly after the Senate, by a vote of 94-2 on Wednesday, confirmed Hillary Clinton as Obama s secretary of state.
The son of a Lebanese mother and Irish father, Mitchell steered the negotiations that led to lasting peace in Northern Ireland and once wrote a report into the causes of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000 for president Bill Clinton s administration.
A day after his inauguration, Obama telephoned Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan s King Abdullah II, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Egypt and Jordan, the only Arab states to have peace treaties with Israel, are mediators in the peace process.
He used this opportunity on his first day in office to communicate his commitment to active engagement in pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace from the beginning of his term, Gibbs said in a statement.
After Israel launched its massive military assault in the Gaza Strip beginning Dec. 27 to halt Hamas rocket fire, Obama promised to engage in Middle East diplomacy immediately upon taking office Jan. 20.
The offensive left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead, including at least 400 children and over 5000 wounded.
In his phone calls, Gibbs said, Obama emphasized his determination to work to help consolidate the ceasefire by establishing an effective anti-smuggling regime to prevent Hamas from rearming.
In her last day at the State Department, outgoing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni signed a deal Friday aimed at halting arms smuggling into Gaza in a bid to clinch a ceasefire.
But many details need to be fleshed out.
The new president also sought to bolster the ceasefire by facilitating in partnership with the Palestinian Authority a major reconstruction effort for Palestinians in Gaza, Gibbs said.
Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said Obama had told the Palestinian leader that he was the recipient of his first call as the 44th US president and that he would do everything he can to achieve peace as quickly as possible.
A close Abbas aide admitted surprise at the speed with which Obama moved, even if he said he knew how serious Obama is about resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The Islamist Hamas movement ousted Abbas s Palestinian Authority from the Gaza Strip in 2007, deepening divisions between the two camps.
At her confirmation hearing last week, Clinton ruled out engaging diplomatically with Hamas, which Rice designated a terrorist group.
In a speech aired on Arab satellite televisions, the exiled chief of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, said on Wednesday the time had come to lift a ban on contacts with his movement.
