US Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Jordan on Thursday for discussions with King Abdullah II on the situation in Jerusalem, including recent tensions at the holy sites there, and on the fight against ISIL, the State Department announced.
Kerry will then travel to the United Arab Emirates on Friday to participate in the Sir Bani Yas Forum, an annual high-level gathering of world leaders and thinkers to discuss critical issues of peace and security, the announcement said. He will hold a series of bilateral meetings and consultations on a range of issues with other leaders in attendance, it said.
Washington, one of Jordan's major allies, is masterminding a military campaign against the ISIL, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, that has recently seized large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria and threatened other regional countries. The US-led military activitiy has been so far restricted to air strikes and deployment of a token military force in Iraq to assist the government forces, with respect of training and combat expertise.
