RIYADH (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh on Monday on the latest stop of a tour partly aimed at defusing tensions with Arab powers, State Department officials said.

Saudi Arabia, Washington's main Arab ally, is angry with Washington over what it sees as a weak foreign policy it believes has allowed Israeli settlement construction to continue in the Palestinian territories and a civil war to go on in Syria.

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton, Editing by William Maclean/Mark Heinrich)