Ramallah - US President Barack Obama's envoy to the Middle East was due in Ramallah Friday to hear the Palestinians' position on renewing peace negotiations with the new Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

George Mitchell, who held his first talks in Israel Thursday since the government was sworn in, was to travel the short distance from Jerusalem to the central West Bank city for talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and acting Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

Abbas has said Netanyahu must openly endorse the two-state solution to the Middle East conflict for him to be a peace partner.

Netanyahu, of the hardline, but mainstream Likud party, has thus far not done so.

Instead, in his talks with Mitchell in Jerusalem late Thursday, he demanded the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, in what appeared a new condition for resuming peace talks.

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's outspoken and controversial new foreign minister of the ultra-nationalist Israel Beiteinu coalition party, also told Mitchell that past approaches to the conflict with the Palestinians, such as the 1993 interim Oslo peace accords, had failed and that "new ideas" were needed.

An Israeli newspaper Friday quoted a senior US diplomat as voicing concern that Netanyahu's demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people was a bid to buy time.

"Israel will define itself as it sees fit. Why should the Palestinians be demanded to recognize it as a Jewish state and not as a nation state?" the diplomat told Ma'ariv.

An Israeli government official told the daily that the Obama Administration would give Israel some six to eight weeks to consolidate its position regarding the peace process - until Netanyahu is expected to travel to Washington at the end of May. (dpa)