President Obama today called King Abdullah of Jordan and together agreed on the need to quickly launch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Obama said he’d dispatch special envoy George Mitchell would follow up in coming weeks to try to set the stage for jumpstarting the long abandoned talks.

“The president and the king agreed on the need to launch Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as soon as possible,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday.

“They also agreed that all parties _ Israel, the Palestinians and Arab states should take steps simultaneously to create a context in which these negotiations can succeed.”

Obama’s call to Abdullah and joint plea to resume peace talks comes just two days after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visited the White House and urged resuming peace talks that would cover the whole breadth of issues in the region, without waiting for interim steps such as the Arab and U.S. demand that Israel stop adding to its settlements in the occupied West Bank.

That came as Israel said this week it would stop new construction, though not existing construction.
Taken together, the actions suggested a simultaneous press for efforts to build confidence and trust _ including Arab concessions _ as well as final status peace talks.

“The president is hopeful that the meetings that he's had here this week and the phone call, the Mubarak meeting and the Abdullah phone call today, that we are continuing to make progress on the path toward Middle East peace,” Gibbs said.

“The optimism continues to rise. We're hopeful and understand that the road ahead will not be easy. It's a complex and emotional set of issues that we look forward to working through.”

While Gibbs refused to characterize Abdullah’s remarks on the phone conversation between the two leaders, he said that Obama lauded Jordan’s efforts to prod Arab states to reach out to Israel.

“The president underscored his strong support for Jordan's efforts to work with other Arab states to reach out to Israel and undertake gestures that would demonstrate the meaning of the Arab Peace Initiative,” Gibbs said.