AMMAN — US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman before flying to Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later on Saturday as he seeks ways to revive long-stalled peace talks. Kerry's back-to-back meetings will follow up on President Barack Obama's visits to Israel and the Palestinian Territories this week in which he called for fresh diplomatic efforts but offered no new peace proposals of his own. Obama promised that Kerry, Washington's new top diplomat, would dedicate time and energy to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, one in which the president failed to make progress during his first term. Kerry accompanied Obama on his four-day Middle East trip. "In addition to meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu this evening, Secretary Kerry will meet with President Abbas at his house in Amman later this afternoon to continue the conversations they started with President Obama and the secretary earlier this week," a State Department official said. Meanwhile, a normally routine bit of Washington bureaucracy could have a big impact on US relations with Cuba, either ushering in a long-stalled detente or slamming the door on rapprochement, perhaps until the scheduled end of the Castro era in 2018. Kerry must decide within a few weeks whether to advocate that Obama should take Cuba off a list of state sponsors of terrorism, a collection of Washington foes that also includes Iran, Syria and Sudan. — Reuters
