AMERICA'S top diplomat John Kerry has started his first official trip as secretary of state, a marathon get-acquainted tour of America's closest allies in Europe and the Middle East.
A plane carrying the new US secretary of state and his team took off from Joint Base Andrews outside Washington about 7.15am (2315 AEDT) on Sunday.
Kerry will visit the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar until March 6.
The first stop will be London, where Kerry will meet with senior British officials, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters on Friday.
Kerry travels on to Berlin where, in addition to meeting Germans, he will encounter his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, for a tricky exchange at a time when Moscow and Washington are at loggerheads on many issues.
"Obviously, they know each other well from when Secretary Kerry was Senator Kerry, but it will be their first opportunity to sit down bilaterally as foreign ministers," Nuland said.
The marathon trip underscores Washington's new foreign policy imperative, which is subtly pivoting away from Asia and increasingly towards Europe.
Tyson Barker of the Bertelsmann Foundation think tank said that, after a first term focused on relations with Pacific countries, President Barack Obama hopes "to consolidate and retro-fit some of our legacy relationships".
Among the issues high on his agenda during the marathon series of talks is a newly announced effort to agree a mammoth free trade agreement between the United States and the European Union.
Obama announced the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in his annual State of the Union address last month, and said the agreement would boost economic growth and jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.
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