CAIRO - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, facing an Arab backlash over her praise for Israel's offer to ease settlement growth, headed to Cairo on Tuesday for hastily convened talks with President Hosni Mubarak.

Clinton was expected to arrive in the evening and go straight into a meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit and intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, Egyptian and US officials said.

She was to meet Mubarak on Wednesday morning to discuss Washington's faltering efforts to revive the Middle East peace process.

Abul Gheit, according to the official MENA news agency, said Clinton had asked for the meeting with Mubarak to discuss her administration's efforts to revive Palestinian-Israeli talks, adding that the peace process was "now passing into a critical stage."

On Monday, Abul Gheit told Clinton in a phone conversation that Egypt supported the Palestinian stance, which refuses negotiations with Israel before a complete halt to settlement building, the agency reported.

Cairo has been mediating between the rival factions, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah in the West Bank, who have been split since Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007.

Clinton extended her regional trip after she was criticised for praising as "unprecedented" a pledge by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to limit settlement growth, steps that fall far short of previous US demands for a complete halt to all settlement activity.

She also called for a speedy resumption of peace talks that were suspended during the Gaza war at the turn of the year, despite the Palestinian insistence that must Israel freeze settlement activity first.