Obama invites Arab and Israeli leaders to Washington

US President Barack Obama has launched a major peace drive for the Middle East, inviting Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to the White House.President Barack Obama dived Tuesday into Middle East peacemaking as he invited Arab and Israeli leaders to Washington and called for "good faith" gestures from all sides, including Israel.The US president signaled deeper involvement in the peace process weeks after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the helm of an Israeli government that resists the two-state solution endorsed by the new US administration.Obama, who received Jordan's King Abdullah II in the Oval Office on Tuesday, has also invited Netanyahu, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak to the White House, said Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs.Gibbs told reporters the visits were expected in the coming weeks.After his inauguration on January 20, Obama and his secretary of state Hillary Clinton named George Mitchell as the special envoy for Arab-Israeli peace, a move analysts said signals constant and focused high-level involvement.Obama's predecessor George W. Bush largely left the peace process to his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, after they convened a conference in Annapolis, Maryland in November 2007 to re-launch the negotiations after a seven-year hiatus.After meeting the Jordanian king, Obama said: "My hope would be that over the next several months ... you start seeing gestures of good faith on all sides."I don't want to get into the details of what those gestures might be, but I think that the parties in the region probably have a pretty good recognition of what intermediate steps could be taken as confidence-building measures."The king was paying his first visit to the White House since Obama became president in January vowing to work for Middle East peace.