Violence in the Middle East has cost the region around $12 trillion in missed economic growth and development over the last two decades, a Swiss government-sponsored report said on Friday.

Israelis, Palestinians and people in every country in the region have lost out as a result of conflict, says the report, which argues that it is in the interest of the whole world to step up peace efforts.

The election of President Barack Obama in the United States 'provides a window of opportunity' in 2009 to press for peace, the report said.

The research team realised that the costs of war go beyond destruction, damage and death caused by the conflict,saidleadauthorSundeepWaslekar, president of the Strategic Foresight Group, a Mumbai-based think thank.

So the team of more than 50 experts from the Middle East and elsewhere also tried to calculate the benefits that may derive from peace, noting that during relatively peaceful periods in the 1990s both Israel and the Palestinian territories had good economic growth rates.

"It should have been possible for all countries to grow at the average rate of at least 8 per cent per annum in the last two decades," the report said.