Occupied Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on Sunday flying to New Orleans where he was to meet US Vice President Joe Biden on the sidelines of a summit of Jewish organisations, his office said.
Netanyahu, whose plane left overnight, was expected to meet Biden at around 1:30pm (1730 GMT), the White House said on Friday, with the two expected to discuss ways to revive moribund peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
The Israeli premier will then address the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America on Monday morning, before heading to New York where he will meet UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, his office said last week.
Later in the week, Netanyahu was expected to meet US Middle East envoy George Mitchell as well as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before flying back to Israel on Thursday, Israeli media reported.
Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians were relaunched in Washington on September 2 but broke down barely three weeks later with the expiry of an Israeli moratorium on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu has stubbornly refused to reimpose the restrictions, despite a range of US incentives to do so, and the Palestinians have said they will not return to the negotiating table while Israel continues to build on land they want for a future state.
US-led diplomatic efforts to unblock the process have been unfruitful, although the administration is expected to step up pressure on both sides in the wake of last week's mid-term US elections.
In early October, Arab League foreign ministers said they would give Washington a month's grace period to break the impasse, but last week, extended that until the end of the month, a Palestinian official told AFP on Friday.
