John Kerry to meet German leadership, Russian FM

US Secretary of State John Kerry will hold talks on Tuesday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle on issues including plans for a free trade agreement between the United States and the European Union and the crisis in Syria. He will hold bilateral meetings with German officials on issues of mutual interest, as well as make a number of public appearances, including an exchange of views with German young people on the state of European-American relations, according to his schedule. Kerry will also hold his first talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the afternoon and discuss a wide range of issues "on the bilateral agenda and key international problems," according to the Russian foreign ministry. The two top diplomats' talks are expected to concentrate on a settlement in Syria and Russia's decision to ban Americans from adopting Russian children after the death last week of a three-year-old Russian boy in his adoptive U.S. family. Kerry arrived late Monday night in the German capital and took his time for a sightseeing tour around his hotel in central Berlin, a city where he spent part of his boyhood when his father was stationed in postwar Germany as a diplomat. Kerry's visit to Berlin will be "an opportunity to reconnect with the city in which he lived as a child," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement before Kerry embarked on the trip. The top American envoy, who took office on Feb. 1 succeeding Hillary Clinton, has visited Britain in his first overseas trip, which will also take him to France, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.