Tel Aviv - United States special envoy George Mitchell arrived in Israel Wednesday evening on the latest leg of a trip in the region to kickstart stalled peace efforts.

Mitchell met Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv shortly after arriving in the country. On Thursday he will meet new Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. It will be his first meeting with them since they took office at the end of last month.

Ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks entered a hiatus at the end of last year, as Israel began an election period, and have not restarted.

Netanyahu, whose hawkish Likud party defeated the centrist Kadima party of Tzipi Livni, has refused explicitly to endorse a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which the international community and the Palestinians see as the end result of the negotiations.

Lieberman further confused the issue by publicly declaring void the so-called Annapolis process, which forced the basis of the nearly year-long negotiations, and saying instead Israel would only accept the road map peace plan, an internationally-sponsored, performance- based initiative which has been in a quagmire since shortly after it was launched in 2003.