BORIS Johnson jetted to New York last night in a bid to restart UK-US travel.
There are hopes America will reopen its border to Brits after the PM meets President Joe Biden at the White House on Tuesday.
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Mr Johnson will also join more than 100 world leaders at the UN — the last gathering before November’s landmark Cop26 summit in Glasgow.
He will urge them to step up on climate change in the last 50 days before November’s get-together.
And he will announce an additional £500million of UK funding to help poorer countries move away from coal.
Mr Johnson said he would push the leaders to take “concrete action on coal, climate, cars and trees”.
It is still not known whether Chinese president Xi Jinping will attend Cop26, although a delegation from the globe’s most polluting nation will be there.
Cop26 President Alok Sharma said: “I’m hopeful he will come.”
It is thought that Mr Johnson will make an “impassioned” case to the US President, over why he should lift the travel ban.
This could mean that fully vaccinated people in the UK may be able to travel directly into America after Mr Biden’s failure to ease restrictions.
Both leaders had promised to take action at the G7 summit in May, but no concrete steps have been taken.
Boris arrived in New York Sunday to begin his four-day US visit.
Boris will also attend the UN General Assembly, his first trip to the White House since he entered Number 10 in July 2019.
The visit comes after the US and UK signed a defence agreement with Australia. This included the deployment of defense-powered submarines to the Indo-Pacific.
There are usually more than four millions Brits who fly to America each year. But, because of the Pandemic, only a few of those trips are actually taking place.
The strict Biden administration rules restrict US citizens and residents from traveling to America from many other countries, such as the UK, Canada, and most of Europe.
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