Kerry to visit Istanbul, Jerusalem and Ramallah in next week

          
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will leave Washington this weekend to travel to Istanbul, Jerusalem and Ramallah, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Wednesday.              

While in Turkey, Kerry will discuss issues including the civil war in neighboring Syria, Nuland told reporters at her daily briefing. On April 8-9 he will visit Jerusalem, where he will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ramallah, where he will see Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.           

He will then fly to London for a Group of Eight (G8) foreign ministers meeting and then to Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo.            

Washington regards Turkey, which shares a 900 km (560-mile) border with Syria, as a pivotal player in backing the Syrian opposition and planning for an era after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.                

A month ago, on his first visit to Turkey since taking office, Kerry criticized Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan for a comment likening Zionism to crimes against humanity, a spat that cast a shadow over talks between the NATO allies.                

US President Barack Obama brokered a tentative reconciliation between Turkey and Israel during a trip to Israel a few weeks later. Israel bowed to a long-standing demand by Ankara, once a close strategic partner, to formally apologize for the killing of nine Turkish citizens in a 2010 naval raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla.                

The rapprochement between the two US allies could help regional coordination to contain spillover from the Syrian civil war and ease Israel's diplomatic isolation in the Middle East as it faces challenges posed by Iran's nuclear program..           


REUTERS