Jordan King to Meet Biden in Washington

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Monday was to meet King Abdullah II of Jordan, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East that has seen an influx of refugees from the conflict in neighboring Syria.

The two were scheduled to meet at 4:15 pm (2015 GMT) at the vice president's residence in the U.S. capital, the White House said, without providing further details.

Some 150,000 Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring Jordan since the start of the March 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad.

The uprising and the government's brutal crackdown have increasingly come to resemble a civil war, with 23,000 people killed, according to a Syrian human rights group. The United Nations puts the figure at around 17,000.