WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched their first White House talks yesterday grappling with rare US-Israeli differences over Middle East peacemaking and how to deal with Iran.

Wading into the thicket of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy four months after taking office, Obama planned to press the hawkish Israeli leader to endorse Palestinian statehood and freeze Jewish settlement expansion on occupied land.

But Netanyahu, who heads a new right-leaning government that has balked so far at embracing a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict, appeared unlikely to comply.