Barack Obama will face the sternest test of his diplomatic skills yet on Monday when he holds his first meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.

Washington, May 16, 2009 – After spending the first three months of his presidency extending goodwill to the world, the US president will host a potentially confrontational meeting at the White House.

He will tell the new Israeli leader to embrace a two-state solution to the Middle Eastern conflict in line with the one favored by the international community and the Israeli and Palestinian publics.

Mr Netanyahu, who leads a new Right-wing coalition, will in turn make it clear that he wants the US to devote more attention to the threat posed by Iran to Israel. He will also highlight the reasons the divided Palestinian territories are not yet ready to constitute a responsible state.

When he visited White House in his first stint as prime minister, Mr Netanyahu lectured Bill Clinton about the Middle East and suffered a rejection by Washington that contributed to his early departure from office.

This time experts believe he will be more diplomatic but relations between Israel and its powerful ally and sponsor have become tenser since Mr Obama took office.

"I don't think we will see a public spat, but Netanyahu is going to find out what the president expects of him," said Amjad Atallah, a former legal adviser to Palestinian negotiators who is now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington.

"The president has an elaborate global vision and he is likely to articulate where Israel-Arab peace fits into that."

Mr Obama has committed himself to succeeding in the Middle East where all his predecessors have failed, believing peace would have a calming effect on Iran and wider Islamist extremism.

Within days of taking office he appointed George Mitchell, the former senator and Northern Ireland negotiator, as special envoy to the Middle East, and later in the month he will host Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president.

With memories still fresh of the war against Hamas extremists in Gaza, the Israelis have been rattled by demands that Jewish settlement-building in the occupied West Bank should cease and by Mr Obama's overtures to their arch-enemy, Iran.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has threatened to annihilate the Jewish state while proceeding with plans to build a nuclear weapon. The strength of Mr Obama's commitment has raised hopes of securing a deal to levels not seen for decades.

Tony Blair, now the representative of the Middle East diplomatic Quartet, hailed a historic "moment of opportunity" in testimony to the US congress this week.

"There is no workable alternative to the two-state solution. The opportunity is there, but it won't remain if not seized. President Obama has recognized this is the time to seize it," he told the senate foreign relations committee.

"If we cannot move this forward now, I think the risk is there will be many people within Israel and within the Palestinian territories who will conclude it can't be moved forward."

Daniel Levy, a adviser to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barack, said: "Political will has always been the missing ingredient. We now have an administration that is very serious and determined."

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