Keeping up the pressure, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton was also in the region and met Abbas ahead of meetings on Friday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Speaking to reporters after two hours of talks with Abbas at his West Bank headquarters, Mitchell did not disclose details of their conversation, but said he would meet the Palestinian president again on Friday.

"We are determined to continue our efforts to find common ground between the parties to enable the direct negotiations to continue," Mitchell said. "We will continue our efforts intensively in the coming days."

Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina reiterated after the Mitchell meeting: "We will not negotiate without a complete freeze on settlements activity."

Mitchell hopes to persuade Abbas to stick with the negotiations despite Israel's refusal, so far, to extend restrictions on Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank.

Ashton, who also met Abbas in Ramallah, is set to meet Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad on Friday before talks with Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, an EU official said.

Ashton made no statement after meeting Abbas, whose spokesman said she "supported the Palestinian position on the settlements freeze" during their meeting.

In a statement before her visit, she said: "As I have said, the EU regrets the Israeli decision not to extend the moratorium on settlements."

The US and EU diplomats are seeking to stave off a breakdown of negotiations, which only restarted this month.

The issue is Israel's refusal to extend a 10-month moratorium on settlement building, as demanded by the Palestinians and urged by both the European Union and the United States.

The moratorium expired on Sunday, but the Palestinians have said they will reserve a final decision on whether to withdraw from the talks until after Abbas has conferred with Arab foreign ministers.

He had been due to meet the ministers in Cairo next Monday, but the Arab League announced on Thursday that the discussion had been postponed for two days to give more time for US-led efforts to save the peace talks.

"It has been decided that the meeting of the Arab League peace committee will take place on October 6," Ahmed Eissa, spokesman for Arab League chief Amr Mussa, told AFP.

The delay was intended to "allow Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to attend the meeting, in light of the latest developments and efforts by the United States for peace talks," Eissa said.

But Cairo wants the meeting to be postponed until a gathering in Libya on October 8-9 because October 6 is a holiday in Egypt, the official MENA news agency reported later on Thursday.

Netanyahu's ruling coalition depends heavily on nationalist hardliners close to the settler movement.

The Israeli premier has baulked at renewing the partial freeze while urging Abbas to stick with the talks, which were relaunched on September 2 after a 20-month hiatus.

Saeb Erakat, the principal Palestinian negotiator, said Abbas had sent US President Barack Obama a letter arguing that by renewing settlement construction it was the Israelis, not the Palestinians, who were endangering peace efforts.

"We have demanded a total halt to Israeli settlement building... to give the peace process the chance it deserves," Erakat said.

Israel's Maariv daily reported that in return for a 60-day extension of the settlement freeze, Obama was offering Netanyahu a guarantee that he would supply Israel with advanced weapons and block any attempt to bring the issue of Palestinian statehood before the UN Security Council.

Israel's Y-net news website said senior Obama adviser Dennis Ross had told key senators the president wanted "two months more of a freeze."

In Washington, the White House denied Obama had sent Netanyahu a letter outlining inducements.

The denial came after a US analyst with ties to Ross posted an online article detailing inducements Obama purportedly offered Netanyahu in return for a two-month extension of the moratorium.

"No letter was sent to Prime Minister Netanyahu. We're not going to comment on sensitive diplomatic matters," said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman.

burs/srm

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