JOIN USJohn 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 on Sunday 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, all of them as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the last four as its chairman.
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 quest to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
While the Syrian opposition is willing to negotiate a peace deal to end the country’s civil war, members this week agreed that Assad cannot be a party to any settlement.