Obama urged to make Mideast peace top priority: Ban

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The main players in the Middle East peace process hope Barack Obama will make the issue a top priority when he takes over the U.S. presidency in January, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday.

Last weekend the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators -- the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States -- met in Egypt to keep alive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, even though political uncertainty in Israel has scotched hopes for a deal this year.

Ban represented the United Nations at the meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

It was expected to be Rice's last trip to the region before Obama takes office in January.

"We expect negotiations to continue uninterrupted through the coming period of transition," Ban told a news conference.

"And all parties will be looking to the incoming U.S. administration to engage early, as a matter of highest priority," he said. "The goal remains clear to all -- an end of conflict, an end of occupation, a two-state solution."

He added that all members of the Quartet "regret that an agreement is unlikely to be reached by ... the end of this year."

Ban reiterated that it was important to support the Palestinian government's attempt to build security and improve living conditions for Palestinians.

This required action on commitments under the 2003 "road map" peace framework, "including on (Jewish) settlements, as well as a cessation of actions such as house demolitions that are contrary to international law or alter the status quo, including in East Jerusalem," he said.

The Quartet members have strongly backed the talks launched at Annapolis, Maryland, nearly a year ago by President George W. Bush, despite expectations that he would fail to meet his year-end target.

The Israeli-Palestinian talks have been hobbled from the start by violence and bitter disputes over Jewish settlement building and the future of Jerusalem. There are also worries that the process could fall apart amid political transitions in Israel and the United States.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by David Storey)