WASHINGTON, 9 May 2007 — Vice President Dick Cheney is reaching out to Arab leaders for help in bringing stability to Iraq, a mission that will include pleas for postwar support for minority party Sunnis.

Cheney departed yesterday on a weeklong mission to the Middle East, right after a visit to the region by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

While Rice’s trip had a wide-ranging agenda that included other tensions in the region, administration officials said Cheney would focus largely on the next steps in Iraq.

Cheney’s first stop will be Abu Dhabi. Other announced stops include Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. Cheney also will visit the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis in the Gulf.

What can Cheney bring to the region that Rice couldn’t?

A senior administration official said President George W. Bush asked Cheney to go because of his close ties with leaders in each of the four countries. But some Middle East experts outside the administration suggested that Cheney’s visit also might be an attempt to try to clear up what might be viewed as mixed messages from Rice by some leaders in the region.

“Some of these people wonder if Condi Rice really speaks for the president when she decides she’s going to talk to the Syrians, or when she agrees to go to a conference that includes the Iranians,” said David Mack, a retired diplomat who was deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs and a consultant to the bipartisan Iraq Study group.

“They wonder if the president is going to pull out the rug from under her. The vice president, who is generally identified as having opposed a lot of the things that we’ve been increasingly doing, can assure them that she speaks for the president as well,” said Mack, now vice president of the Middle East Institute, a group devoted to fostering knowledge of the region.

Rice was in the neighborhood attending an international conference on Iraq in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, attended by representatives of both Syria and Iran. She met on the sidelines for 30 minutes with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, but had no face-to-face contact with the Iranian foreign secretary.

Cheney’s trip will build on Rice’s visit to the region, said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. “We have challenges in the region, and it’s important that everyone be working together in order to solve them,” she said.