But Egyptian officials declined to specify what help they would provide in the campaign against ISIS, and Mr. Shoukry made it clear that he also had in mind fighting Islamist militants at home and in neighboring Libya.

Mr. Kerry has already visited Baghdad; Amman, Jordan; and Ankara, Turkey; and he attended an emergency meeting of regional governments in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, in which Arab nations endorsed a coordinated military and political campaign against ISIS. Saudi Arabia has pledged to allow the training of Syrian rebel forces opposed to ISIS at bases in its territory, but no country in the region has publicly detailed what military support it might provide.

Early Sunday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia committed aircraft and military advisers to the effort. He said in a statement that the commitment was a response to a formal request from the United States, adding that combat troops would not be deployed. “The ISIL death cult threatens the people of Iraq, the region and the wider world,” Mr. Abbott said, referring to the group by the acronym for an alternate name, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

The Obama administration is keen to enlist material support from regional powers with Sunni Muslim majorities like Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to avoid the impression that the United States is intervening in a sectarian war on behalf of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government against its opponents in the Sunni minority, some of whom have lent support to ISIS.

Egypt is not expected to make an important military contribution; rather, American officials want Cairo to use its clout as the traditional capital of Sunni Islam — and home to the Al Azhar center of Sunni scholarship — to mobilize public opinion in the Arab world against ISIS. “As an intellectual and cultural capital of the Muslim world, Egypt has a critical role to play,” Mr. Kerry said.