Deputy Assistant Secretary for Arabian Peninsula Affairs Daniel Benaim And Deputy Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS Ian McCary On the Secretary's Upcoming Travel to Saudi Arabia

MR PATEL:  Hey, everybody.  Good afternoon and thank you so much for joining us today on this Friday for this trip preview call for Secretary Blinken's visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  This call will be on the record but it will be embargoed until the call's conclusion.  Joining me today to brief on this call is Deputy Assistant Secretary from our Near East Affairs Bureau for Arabian Peninsula Affairs Daniel Benaim as well as Deputy Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS Ian McCray - Ian McCary.  Sorry.

With that, I am going to turn it over to Deputy Assistant Secretary Benaim to offer some thoughts, and then we of course will have some time for questions at the end.  Dan, take us away.

MR BENAIM:  Thanks so much, Vedant.  Good afternoon, everybody.  Next week, on June 6th through 8th, the Secretary of State will travel to Saudi Arabia.  He will host with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan the Ministerial of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.  That will be in Riyadh, as my colleague Ian McCary will momentarily discuss.  That important effort provided an opportunity to engage across a wider range of issues.

The Secretary will hold another ministerial meeting with the Gulf Cooperation Council and its foreign ministers, with whom the United States cooperates on a range of issues to promote regional security, stability, de-escalation, and integration in the Gulf, Middle East, and beyond.  He will also consult with Saudi leaders on a range of bilateral, regional, and global priorities.