PARIS — After a week of travel in the Mideast, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry changed course and arrived Saturday in Paris for talks with his Russian counterpart on the Ukraine crisis.
Halfway home from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Kerry landed in Shannon, Ireland, to refuel, and turned his plane around.
Kerry is to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Sunday night at the Russian ambassador’s Paris residence.
Kerry spoke to Lavrov as he flew to Shannon after President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in a call Friday to have their foreign ministers meet to discuss a possible diplomatic resolution to the Ukraine situation.
While in Paris, Kerry may also meet separately with the French foreign minister Laurent Fabius.
White House officials described Friday’s hourlong call as “frank and direct” and said Obama urged Putin to offer a written response to a diplomatic resolution on Ukraine that the U.S. has presented. He urged Moscow to scale back its troop build-up on the Ukraine border.
The Kremlin, on the other hand, said Putin had drawn Obama’s attention to a “rampage of extremists” in Ukraine and suggested “possible steps by the international community to help stabilize the situation” in Ukraine.
Kerry had already been due to return to Europe on Tuesday for a NATO foreign ministers meeting and had been considering returning to the Middle East to continue a press to salvage foundering Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Kerry aides said the option of going to Israel, the Palestinian territories or Jordan remained a possibility.
State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said Saturday that Kerry would remain in close touch with Martin Indyk, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, and the negotiating team in Jerusalem and Ramallah, West Bank, in the event he needs to return to the region before NATO.
Kerry had been in Riyadh, as well as Rome and The Hague, with President Barack Obama this week but is traveling on his own plane.He made a side trip to Amman, Jordan, on Wednesday to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas while Obama visited Brussels.
Kerry has also had several conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since he left Washington on Monday.
