By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The special envoy for Middle East peace will travel to the region over the weekend to see if Israel and the Palestinians are ready to begin indirect peace talks, a senior official said on Wednesday.

George Mitchell's visit follows a declaration of support by Arab League ministers for such talks, a gesture that Washington hopes will allow the two sides to resume a dialogue, albeit via U.S. mediators, more than a year after negotiations broke off.

U.S. officials brushed aside criticism that if the talks began, the two sides would not even be in the same room, saying they would ultimately have to sit down together to end the six-decade conflict and that indirect talks were a start.

Having declared Israeli-Palestinian peace a priority when he took office in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama has little to show for his efforts so far and U.S. officials seized on the Arab ministers' stance as a step in the right direction.

"We were very pleased by the endorsement that came out of Cairo today," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters in Brasilia. "(We) are very committed to try to bring about the two-state solution and we hope the proximity talks will be the beginning of that process."

"This is positive," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters, although he declined to say when indirect talks might begin and who might take part in them. "Senator Mitchell will return to the region in the next few days to continue our efforts to relaunch negotiations as soon as possible."

Crowley declined to say when indirect talks might begin, who might take part in them or where they might lead.

A U.S. official who spoke on condition that he not be named said Mitchell would travel over the weekend.

Arab League ministers earlier on Wednesday supported the U.S. call for so-called "proximity talks" between Israel and the Palestinians under which Mitchell would shuttle between the two sides in an effort to end the six-decade conflict.

However, they said indirect negotiations should last no more than four months, should not automatically lead to direct talks and they questioned Israel's desire for a "just peace."

The public stance by the Arab ministers was designed to give Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas regional cover to resume talks despite Israel's refusal to halt all building in Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in Jerusalem.

"The administration is going into this with the understanding that they have a short time to produce progress," said Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland.

"There are ... multiple clocks ticking," he added, pointing to the expiration this year of a 10-month Israeli moratorium on settlement building and to the Palestinian Authority's desire to show progress and to bolster its position against Hamas, the Islamist movement that took control of Gaza in 2007.

"Come the fall, if there is no evidence of real progress I think we are in for a lot of possible troubles," he added.

A second U.S. official who spoke on condition that he not be named suggested that indirect talks might not look that different from Mitchell's efforts over the last year in which he has shuttled among the two sides and regional players.

"The real objective is the conclusion of an agreement but in the meantime we are still working on a resumption of substantive, face-to-face, meaningful negotiations," said a third U.S. official who declined to be identified.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)