Tony Blair said on Tuesday he saw “a sense of possibility” in the Middle East in his first visit to the region as an international envoy but cautioned against expecting any peace breakthrough soon.

The Quartet of peace brokers — the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia — has asked the British former prime minister to present in September an initial plan for building ruling institutions for a future Palestinian state.

Blair, in his first public remarks since starting his mission on Monday, said he came to listen, to learn and to reflect” in preliminary talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

“I think that even from the conversations I’ve had there is a sense of possibility,” Blair told a news conference after meeting Israeli President Shimon Peres.

“But whether that sense of possibility can be translated into something — that is something that needs to be worked at and thought about over time,” he said.

Blair held talks later with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose secular Fatah faction lost control of Gaza to Hamas radicals in fighting last month. Blair ends his visit with a private meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Diplomats said Blair’s limited mandate could expand later into a more direct peacemaking role, an idea backed by Abbas’s aides.

Many Israeli officials are cool to the prospect.

“The mandate of Prime Minister Blair is motivated and generated by the objectives and not by the verbal mandate that he’s given,” said Abbas aide Saeb Erekat, in an apparent allusion to the goals of peace and Palestinian statehood.

Peres, 83, said Blair faced “one of the most responsible and demanding tasks of his career” and there was “a real chance for his success”.