Vice President Mike Pence will visit Egypt, Jordan, and Israel on a Middle East trip scheduled for January 19-23.
Combatting terrorism and assisting persecuted religious minorities will be topics of discussion. Pence will arrive first in Egypt on the 20th to meet with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The next day Pence will travel to Jordan to meet with His Majesty King Abdullah II. The Vice President will then spend January 22-23 in Israel.
In Israel Pence will participate in bilateral meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin. The Vice President is scheduled to present remarks at the Knesset. He will also visit Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem and the Western Wall in Jerusalem during the trip, according to his office.
“The Vice President is traveling to the Middle East to reaffirm our commitment to work with the United States’ allies in the region to defeat radicalism that threatens future generations,” said the Vice President’s Press Secretary Alyssa Farah. “The Vice President is looking forward to meeting with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and Israel to discuss ways to work together to fight terrorism and improve our national security.”
Pence was originally scheduled to visit Israel in December, shortly after President Donald Trump announced that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel and that the U.S. Embassy in Israel will be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The trip was delayed as the U.S. Senate anticipated a critical vote on tax cut legislation and the possibility that Pence may need to make a tie-breaking vote in his capacity as President of the Senate. At the time, the White House marked January as the rescheduled time frame for the trip.
The Associated Press reported in early January that the trip had again been postponed from the January timeframe, but the Vice President’s office quickly refuted this report.
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