WASHINGTON: John Kerry views his first trip as US secretary of state as a listening tour, but the leaders he meets will want to hear whether he has any new ideas on Syria, Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Kerry left Washington yesterday for London, the first stop on a nine-nation, 11-day trip that will also take him to Berlin, Paris, Rome, Ankara, Cairo, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Doha before he returns home on March 6.
It is an introductory trip for a man who needs little introduction abroad after spending 28 years in the US Senate.
After talks with allies in London, Berlin and Paris, Kerry travels to Rome to meet members of the Syrian opposition as well as a wider group of nations seeking to support them in their nearly two-year quest to oust Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.
While the opposition Syrian National Coalition is willing to negotiate a peace deal to end the country’s civil war, members this week agreed that Assad must step down and cannot be a party to any settlement.
US President Barack Obama has limited US support to non-lethal aid for the rebels who are poorly armed compared to Assad’s army and loyalist militias.
Kerry makes his first foreign trip as senior US diplomats, along with counterparts from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia, will meet Iranian officials on Tuesday in Kazakhstan in an effort to persuade Iran to curtail its nuclear programme.
Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution think-tank said The Custodian of the the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia would regard himself, rather than Kerry, as the listening party and want to hear of any new U.S. approaches on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran and other issues. “The secretary has the tough job of selling as something new an administration (whose) foreign policies are pretty well established,” Riedel said.
Reuters
