Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said before White House talks today that achieving a Palestinian statehood deal he and president George W. Bush failed to seal should be a main goal of the Obama administration.
A senior Israeli official said Mr Olmert, on a visit to Washington to bid farewell to Mr Bush, delivered that message at a meeting with US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.
"The prime minister stressed the importance that the Annapolis process be continued by the next US administration and Israeli government," the official said.
Mr Olmert, who leaving office in February after a parliamentary election and formation of a new government, is due to meet Mr Bush tonight for talks Israeli officials said would focus on the peace process and Iran's nuclear ambitions.
The United States, Israel and the Palestinians have all acknowledged they will not have a peace accord in place before Mr Bush vacates the White House in January, missing a target date set at the Annapolis peace conference a year ago this week.
Barack Obama, who visited Israel and the occupied West Bank in July, pledged at the time - in an apparent jab at Mr Bush's last-minute efforts to secure peace - not to "wait a few years into my term or my second term if I'm elected" to press for a deal.
Although Mr Olmert has vowed to pursue peace until his last day in office - a pledge his spokesman said he repeated to Ms Rice - public interest in Israel in the lame-duck leader's policies is waning as the election campaign gathers speed.
Opinion polls in Israel show former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party leading the ruling centrist Kadima faction in the election.
Mr Netanyahu has said he would focus peace efforts on shoring up the Palestinian economy rather than on territorial issues, a policy that could spell the end of the Annapolis process.
Mr Olmert's successor as Kadima leader, foreign minister Tzipi Livni, has not voiced support for his position.
Reuters