He said: “The vote did not come out the way that President Obama and I and others hoped that it would, but that’s democracy and we respect the rights of the voters and we respect the process”.
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Kerry arrived in Rome on Sunday on a planned visit to have lunch with Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni and a working dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Kerry, who flies to Brussels and London on Monday for crisis talks with European Union and British leaders, said the ideal of unity must remain paramount as Britain negotiates “Brexit”.
“There is a continuing criticality to this relationship, and one of the things that I want to emphasize in coming here today to Europe is how important the relationship of Europe, the European Union, is to the United States and to the world”, Kerry said in remarks with Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni.
In the British capital, Kerry was blunt about the US hope that Britain would have voted to remain in the 28-nation bloc.
“There are steps Europe needs to take to respond to the expression of voters and the concerns of people in other countries”, Kerry said, without entering the European debate over a quick or a slow breakup with Britain.
Mogherini had been expected to meet Kerry in Rome on Sunday, but she was busy dealing with the fallout of the dramatic vote, which stunned European and world leaders. He will meet with Mogherini in Brussels, and with his British counterpart, Philip Hammond, in London.
He will meet European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini in Brussels and British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond in London on Monday to assure them of continued USA engagement, a senior State Department official said.
Visiting Britain in April, President Barack Obama noted ongoing U.S. -EU trade negotiations and warned Britons that a vote to “leave” could put them at the back of the line for similar deals.
Kerry said that, despite Brexit, the United States “will continue to have a close and special relationship with Britain”.
Obama himself, on a visit to London last month, warned British voters that their nation would go “to the back of the queue” for a United States trade deal if they voted “out”. Kerry is on a one day trip.
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The London visit will be the first by a senior USA official since Thursday’s dramatic referendum, when voters demanded Britain leave the world’s richest trading bloc.
