US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she hoped to persuade Israelis and Palestinians to agree on a common set of issues to discuss as she headed to the Middle East amid skepticism about the US commitment to pursuing peace.
Speaking to a small group of reporters, Ms Rice also said she hoped that Arab states would find a way to actively follow up on their 2002 peace initiative, which an Arab League summit in Riyadh is expected to reaffirm next week.
Analysts believe circumstances are far from conducive to a revived peace process given divisions among the Palestinians and the political weakness of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, leaving both sides ill-equipped to negotiate.
Olmert has decided to shun the new Hamas-led Palestinian national unity government because it has failed to recognize Israel and renounce violence and plans to limit his dealings with the more moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah.
"Right now, my primary goal is to establish a mechanism, a common approach, that I can use with them in parallel so that we are addressing the same issues. That's really the key right now," Ms Rice told reporters before leaving on a four-day trip to Egypt, Israel, the West Bank and Jordan.
"What would make this trip a success for me is if I can establish that we have now a common approach to moving forward," she added, saying she hoped they might agree to discuss -- initially via US officials going back and forth between the two sides -- issues like security, Palestinian governance or defining a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.
Ms Rice's trip begins with a visit to Aswan, Egypt, where she will hold talks with the foreign ministers of the so-called Arab quartet -- Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- and with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
She also is expected to meet Olmert, Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah.
The talks come ahead of next week's Arab League summit that is expected to reaffirm a 2002 Arab peace plan that offered Israel normal ties with Arab countries in return for full withdrawal from land it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.
Ms Rice said an Israeli-Palestinian peace process should be accompanied by a wider Arab-Israeli reconciliation, saying she hoped the Arab peace plan would be relaunched "in a way that leaves open the possibility for active diplomacy based on it -- not just putting it in the middle of the table and leaving it at that."
Despite making her third trip to the region this year, Ms Rice faces doubts Washington is really committed to pushing peace between Israel and the Palestinians or the broader Arab world.
"I think they are serious about putting more effort in. I think they are not serious about putting in the kind of effort and presidential involvement that a final settlement will require," said Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
There are also questions in the region about whether the US diplomacy is motivated more by Washington's need for Arab support to help stabilize Iraq rather than by a desire to try to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.