WASHINGTON (AP) – Secretary of State John Kerry is heading to Europe and the Middle East seeking answers to the Obama administration’s two most vexing foreign policy questions: violence and spiraling tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and the worsening conflict in Syria.
The administration has ultimate goals for each crisis but no clear path to reach them. Kerry will be listening as much as talking as he tries to navigate ways of restoring relative calm in Israel and the Palestinian territories and reviving efforts for a political transition in Syria that would end the war.
Kerry leaves Wednesday for Berlin, where he will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, and then Vienna, where he will see the foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia about Syria on Friday.