(PARIS) - President Nicolas Sarkozy sought Sunday to bolster France's role in the Middle East, hosting talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders after welcoming the presidents of Syria and Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas were to meet at the Elysee palace, before heading with Sarkozy to a summit for the launch of a new Union for the Mediterranean.

Olmert and Abbas are among 43 leaders from Europe and the Mediterranean gathering in Paris to inaugurate the new forum, which aims to boost cooperation in one of the world's most volatile regions.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the Mediterranean summit was coming at "a time of hope" in the Middle East, hailing the progress in Israeli-Syrian peace efforts and negotiations between Syria and Lebanon.

"A new wind of dialogue is blowing around the Mediterranean," he told foreign ministers meeting ahead of the Paris summit.

Sarkozy is stepping up France's Mideast diplomacy, bringing friends and foes together around the same table, and pushing to advance peace in the region.

On Saturday the French leader hosted landmark talks between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad whose Paris visit marks his return to the diplomatic stage and Lebanon's President Michel Sleiman, whose election in May ended a drawn-out political crisis in Lebanon.

Sarkozy afterwards announced the decision by both countries to establish diplomatic relations, a first since their independence from colonial rule.

Syria, the former powerbroker in Lebanon, withdrew its troops in 2005 in the aftermath of the killing of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, for which it was widely blamed. Damascus denies involvement.

While Washington still brands Syria a terror state, France has moved since Sleiman's election to bring Assad out of the diplomatic cold, renewing ties broken off after the murder of Hariri, who was a personal friend of Sarkozy's predecessor Jacques Chirac.

Sarkozy called on Syria to take on "a full role in the affairs of the region," announcing plans to travel to Damascus, while Assad said he hoped the French leader could play a role in the Israeli-Syria peace process.

Israel and Syria, which technically have been at war since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, have held three rounds of indirect talks through Turkey since March.

Kouchner earlier warned that the international community needed to work harder to boost the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Though the two sides have met regularly since the relaunch of the process last November, after a seven-year hiatus, talks have stalled over the issue of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

"Something appears to be starting. But I am sad to say that discussions between Israelis and Palestinians are not part of it for the time being," Kouchner said.

"We have to ask them to move a bit faster, because the Palestinian people are waiting and there is no change."

Abbas and Olmert, in agreement with US President George W. Bush, have vowed to reach an agreement resolving the decades-old conflict by 2009, but the talks have shown little progress.

Palestinian leaders have said they may call off the talks in protest at Israel's expansion of Jewish settlements.

Abbas, who came to Paris with chief negotiators Ahmad Qorei and Saeb Erakat, is due to call on Olmert to speed up the peace process, his spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said.

But Rudeina warned the gulf separating the two sides is as wide as ever.

"No issue has been settled, hence the necessity of greater efforts from the US administration and from the international community to avoid the region falling into uncontrollable chaos," he told AFP.

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