Rice is due in Bahrain on April 21 to meet the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan and the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, spokesman Sean McCormack said.
"I would expect they’d talk a lot about Iraq. They will talk about issues of interest in the region. I’m sure that they’ll talk about the status of the Israeli-Palestinian discussion," McCormack said.
Rice will then attend a previously announced international conference in Kuwait on April 22 to promote Iraq’s security that involves Iran and other neighbors, he said.
The conference, which was held previously in Egypt and Turkey, will be attended by Iraq’s neighbors, UN Security Council permanent members including the United States and other G8 members.
Iran, which is vehemently opposed to the US military presence in Iraq, has said it will attend the conference.
Asked if Rice would be open to talks with the Iranian delegation at the conference, McCormack said "there’s nothing on the schedule for them to meet" but noted that the last meeting in Istanbul involved informal interaction.
"They didn’t have what I would describe as any substantive conversations, but there was some interaction at the — at one of the sessions" in Turkey, he noted.
