Trump envoy meets Abbas

US President Donald Trump's administration waded into the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict yesterday as one of his top advisers held his first meeting with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

After five hours of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday night, Jason Greenblatt met Abbas in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Details of their talks were not yet clear.

US officials have described the visit by Greenblatt, Trump's special representative for international negotiations, as a fact-finding mission as the White House seeks a way forward in restarting long-deadlocked peace efforts.

But it comes after Trump cast uncertainty over years of international efforts to foster a two-state solution to the conflict when he met Netanyahu at the White House last month.

At that meeting, Trump broke with decades of US policy by saying he was not bound to a two-state solution to the conflict and would be open to one state if it meant peace.

He has also sparked concern among Palestinians and others by pledging during his campaign to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the status of which is one of the thorniest issues of the conflict.

Trump has since backed away, with US officials saying the decision-making process was in the early stages on the issue.