US President Barack Obama's new Middle East envoy arrived in Cairo on Tuesday on a tour to kick off the new administration's efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and shore up a shaky Gaza truce.

George Mitchell, a former US senator, was due to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday at the start of a week-long trip that will also take him to Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, France and Britain.

Obama, wading quickly into Middle East diplomacy, said on Tuesday the time was ripe to resume Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and that his administration would adopt a more comprehensive approach in its ties with the Muslim world.

"Sending George Mitchell to the Middle East is fulfilling my campaign promise that we're not going to wait until the end of my administration to deal with Palestinian and Israeli peace. We're going to start now," Obama told Al Arabiya television in an interview.

"He's going to be speaking to all the major parties involved. And he will then report back to me. From there we will formulate a specific response," Obama said. He added that he had told Mitchell to "start by listening".

Mitchell, a mediator who helped to resolve the Northern Ireland conflict, was named by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week to lead US efforts to end the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Critics faulted the Bush administration for what they viewed as its relative disengagement from Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking until its last year, when it tried but failed to mediate an agreement by the end of 2008.

Obama has made clear the Middle East conflict will be a high priority as he tries to repair a US image battered by the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's perceived "cowboy diplomacy." - Reuters