In June and July, Rice has literally circled the planet twice for talks on those issues and in the first three days of next week will see top officials from Pakistan, China, Israel, Italy as well as Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators.
Rice will be pressing the Pakistani prime minister to do more to combat militants along the Afghan border, seeking additional support from China on Iran and North Korea and assessing the slow pace of progress in the effort to conclude an Israel-Palestinian deal by year's end.
Although prospects for any of those are uncertain, it is not for lack of trying, even if critics say it may be too little, too late.
Administration officials are fond of saying President Bush wants to "sprint to the finish" and perhaps no other Cabinet member has logged more travel time in that endeavor than Rice who returns from her latest round-the-world jaunt on Monday and heads immediately into her Washington meetings.
That nine-day excursion was marked by unprecedented but inconclusive overtures to Iran and North Korea
- the remaining two charter members of Bush's "axis of evil" - and began in the Persian Gulf before Singapore for an Asian security forum, then Australia, New Zealand and Samoa.
It came on the heels of a trip to Europe, where she signed a missile defense treaty in Prague and visited Georgia in a show of support for a NATO aspirant locked in a tense feud with Russia over separatist areas.
That was preceded by another globe-circling tour that started in Europe with a Palestinian security conference and ended in China after stops in Japan and South Korea that were focused on North Korea and a dispute over U.S. beef imports.
Although she'll take a brief break in the first week of August, she will then return to China to head up the official U.S. delegation to the closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games. Her schedule for September is not finalized but shows no sign of a letup.
