Hello and welcome to News Hour from the World Service of the BBC coming live from

London.

This is Owen Bennett Jones.

The US Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin is in London today for talks with

Arab leaders about how to de-escalate the Middle East conflict. He's meeting

foreign ministers from Jordan and the UAE and the Lebanese Prime Minister.

He's been trying to get a ceasefire for many, many months now with strikingly little progress.

Is that about to change?

This is what he had to say before the meetings in London began.

We've had very good and important conversations this week, including this morning,

on ending the war in Gaza and charting a path for what comes next and those

conversations will continue but I think this is a moment of importance and

urgency that we're working to seize.

We've got a report from Gaza itself in just a moment, but first let's get up to date with all

this diplomacy and we've got our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman on the line.

You've been traveling with the Secretary of State, so tell us, you know, how this fits in to

his few days of diplomacy.

Well, there's two things to say really. few days of diplomacy.

Well, there's two things to say really in that what Anthony Blinkin's been doing both in the region and here in London where I am now has been to talk to both the Israelis and to Arab leaders, less about the ceasefire and hostage release deal that has been stalled for many, many weeks now and more

about the so-called day after plan the plan for a post-conflict

Gaza how such a how a guard would be run basically secured rebuilt and crucially governed at the end of the war.

Now it might seem a bit odd that they're sort of moving to that stage before they've even

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