Jared Kushner
Jared KushnerReuters

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, made an unannounced visit to Saudi Arabia this week, his third trip to the country this year, Politico reported Sunday.

According to the report, Kushner left Washington, D.C., via commercial airline on Wednesday for the trip, which was not announced to the public. He returned home Saturday, a White House official told Politico.

Kushner traveled separately from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who led a delegation to Riyadh last week to focus on combating terrorist financing and also visited Israel.

The president's son-in-law was accompanied in the region by deputy national security adviser Dina Powell and Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt. Greenblatt continued from Saudi Arabia to Amman, Jordan, Cairo, Ramallah and Jerusalem, where he was on Sunday and met with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The White House official would not say who Kushner met with in Saudi Arabia nor did he provide details on the purpose of his trip, but Politico noted that the Trump administration has said its strategy is to try to draw in neighboring Arab leaders to play a role in Middle East peace.

“The Senior Advisor to the President, the Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy, and the Special Representative for International Negotiations recently returned from Saudi Arabia,” the White House official said in a statement to Politico. “The Senior Advisor has also been in frequent contact with officials from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.”

The White House official added, “While these regional talks will play an important role, the President reaffirms that peace between Israelis and Palestinians can only be negotiated directly between the two parties and that the United States will continue working closely with the parties to make progress toward that goal.”

Kushner, who was charged with helping to broker a deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority after Trump took office, has already visited Israel several times, meeting with both Netanyahu and PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel has agreed to resume talks, but Abbas continues to impose preconditions on talks instead of meeting Netanyahu. PA officials have expressed pessimism over Trump's peace efforts.

Kushner’s peace efforts have received the backing of the Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers.