The top American diplomat is visiting Germany and Brussels, seat of the EU and NATO, to stress the importance of transatlantic ties before he and the rest of President Barack Obama's administration hand over to the Trump team on January 20.
Trump has vowed to rip up key diplomatic achievements reached under Kerry - from the Iran nuclear deal to a trans-Pacific trade pact - and was this week looking for a successor at the helm of the State Department.
In the evening Kerry was to receive the German Cross of Merit from Steinmeier, for their close cooperation in areas from climate change to countering the Islamic State group.
Tomorrow in Brussels, Kerry joins a two-day NATO foreign ministers' meeting which, a US diplomat said, aims to boost efforts "to strengthen NATO's security, to project stability to the alliance's east and south, and to strengthen NATO-EU cooperation".
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On Wednesday Kerry will travel to the northern German city of Hamburg for a two-day foreign ministers' meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), hosted by Steinmeier.
The meeting of the 57-member OSCE will address concerns especially in eastern Europe about the threat posed by Russia after its 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula.
Also in Hamburg will be Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Kerry's counterpart amid tensions over the Ukraine conflict and the Syrian war, where Moscow backs the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
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