Kerry returning to Middle east hoping to kickstart talks

US Secretary of State John Kerry is returning to Jordan Monday on his sixth trip to the region as he seeks to persuade Israelis and Palestinians to resume peace talks. Kerry will leave Monday and travel to Amman where he will meet a delegation from the Arab League and Jordanian leaders, a top US official said. Since he took office on February 1 the US top diplomat has made a search for a long-elusive Middle East peace deal one of the top priorities of his tenure. A Palestinian official told AFP that Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas will meet Kerry in Israel. "It is expected that (Palestinian) president Abbas and Kerry will meet in Amman," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "We are waiting to see what new ideas Kerry will bring with him after his last tour of the region," he added. But State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said she could not yet confirm whether Kerry would also meet Israeli or Palestinian leaders during his trip. "Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Amman, Jordan, departing this afternoon, or I should say this evening," Psaki told reporters. She said he would meet on Wednesday with Jordanian and Arab League officials to "provide an update on Middle East peace" and they would also discuss the situation in Egypt and Syria. Last month the top US diplomat spent four days locked in intensive shuttle diplomacy between the Israeli and Palestinian leadership seeking to coax the two sides back into direct negotiations after a gap of nearly three years. After talks in Jerusalem, Amman, and the West Bank city of Ramallah, Kerry said he felt "we have made real progress" adding "with a little more work, the start of final status negotiations could be within reach." He has left behind a team of top US officials to seek to work through the remaining hurdles to a resumption of talks. Jeremy Ben-Ami, director of J Street, a pro-Israel, pro-peace American lobby group told AFP he was "hopeful of a positive surprise." "We are hopeful that the secretary's efforts that he has put in over the last three months are on the verge of producing some results in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process."