BEIRUT: US envoy George Mitchell was in Beirut Friday to meet with Lebanese President Michel Sleiman as part of a renewed push by Washington to broker a comprehensive Middle East peace accord.
On his arrival from Damascus late Thursday, he met parliament speaker Nabih Berri and members of Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s office.
He made no comment following those talks.
Syria and Lebanon are still technically at war with Israel and Washington is hoping to convince both states to enter into peace negotiations with the Jewish state and to support Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Israel and the Palestinians went into a second round of peace talks this week, after relaunching US-brokered direct negotiations on September 2 following a 20-month hiatus.
While in Damascus, where he met President Bashar Al-Assad, Mitchell said that for Washington a peace deal meant an "agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, between Israel and Syria and between Israel and Lebanon and the full normalization of relations between Israel and its neighbors."
