The visit by Mostafa Muhammad Najjar comes at a time when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is beginning her tour to Gulf countries in a bid to tighten sanctions against Iran and win greater support from allies for Iraq's new government.

Iran’s state media reports Sunday that Najjar’s talks will include proposals for closer coordination on maritime security. Oman and Iran share control of the Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for about 40 percent of oil tanker traffic.

Oman also has strong ties to the West and helped negotiate the $500,000 bail in September to free American Sarah Shourd from a Tehran prison. Shourd’s two American companions remain jailed on espionage charges.

In her five-day trip to the UAE, Oman and Qatar, Clinton will also urge the region to cooperate more to advance democratic, economic and social reforms, officials said. It is her second trip to the energy-rich Gulf in around a month, following her visit to Bahrain in early December.

A senior State Department official told reporters Clinton would ask Gulf Arab leaders for insight into events in Iran, which is just across the Gulf, and discuss how to make progress in new multilateral nuclear talks.

Host Turkey said talks involving Iran and the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany on Tehran's disputed nuclear program will take place in Istanbul on Jan. 21 and 22.

Clinton will also "want to take stock on where we are on the sanctions regime," the official said.

In Qatar, US officials said, Clinton will participate in the seventh Forum for the Future, the highlight of a tour organized around Clinton's push for a better partnership between governments, business and civil society.

The forum was set up by the Bush administration so that leaders from the Middle East and North Africa, the Group of Eight leading industrial countries, and delegates from business and civil society could meet to discuss reform.

Another senior US official said that during every stop Clinton would meet civil society activists involved in tackling issues such as child marriage or domestic violence, as well as promoting business development and education.

At the Doha forum, she will meet with a representative group "to hear about some of the challenges that they face and about what we can do to help them to do their work," the official said.

But for many in the region, US support for civil society has been undermined by its failure to advance the Arab-Israeli peace process, by the turmoil in Iraq and a perceived lack of pressure on Egypt to hold free and fair elections.