US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Cairo on Tuesday for hastily convened talks with President Hosni Mubarak on the Washington's faltering Middle East peace efforts, an AFP correspondent said.

Clinton will go straight into a meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit and intelligence chief Omar Suleiman and meet Mubarak in the morning to discuss US attempts to revive talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

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."

Clinton extended her regional trip after she was criticised on Saturday 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.

- We always carry a sense of urgency into the Middle East, because if there's a vacuum, there are lots of spoilers willing to take advantage of that vacuum - US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said.