By Xinhua,
Washington : U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has embarked on a multi-stop overseas trip for meetings with a number of heads of states, his campaign said Saturday.
For security reasons, there is no public schedule for the visit but the campaign’s spokesman Robert Gibbs said the senator from Illinois has actually left Washington on July 17 and made a brief stop in Kuwait before arriving in Afghanistan on Saturday.
In Kuwait, he visited a U.S. military camp and played basketball with some soldiers.
Accompanied by two Senate colleagues, Democrat Jack Reed and Republican Chuck Hagel, Obama is now in Afghanistan and plans to visit Iraq.
He will also visit Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and the United Kingdom next week.
King Abdullah II of Jordan is expected to urge Obama, if elected president, to make Arab-Israeli peace talks a higher priority than has been the case under President George W. Bush.
In Israel, Obama is expected to meet the country’s top leaders: President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
He will also visit the Palestinian territories, and meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salaam Fayad.
Obama can expect a friendly reception in Europe, where he will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel on July 23.
In addition, Obama is slated to meet with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Conservative Party Leader David Cameron as well as French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The trip is aimed to bolster the U.S. presidential hopeful’s credentials in foreign policy and national security, which is considered his “weak point” in comparison to his Republican rival John McCain.
In a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, 48 percent of registered voters said Obama would make a good commander in chief, compared with 72 percent for McCain.