Sarah Palin will meet with a star-studded foreign-policy cast at the United Nations this week.

The Alaska governor and running mate to Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, will meet with former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Colombia President Alvaro Uribe as the U.N. opens Tuesday, the McCain campaign said.

The New York Times reports that Palin will also meet that day with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, and on Wednesday will chat with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, new Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia. Topics will include trade with Colombia, security conditions and resurgence of the Talban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and U.S. troop levels in the region.

The pow-wows are, in part, to show the world that Palin is ready, willing and able to meet the foreign policy challenges facing the next president of the United States. Palin has come under heavy fire for not just her lack of experience in such affairs, but even for her lack of foreign travel — she got her first passport last year.

The Times reports that Kissinger, a close outside adviser to McCain’s campaign and national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations, will likely give Palin a broad overview of international affairs, focusing particularly on Russia, China and the Middle East.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Palin will watch some of the leaders of the 192 U.N. member states address the opening sessions, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, President Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Sen. Joe Biden, D-DE, Barack Obama’s running mate who has traveled extensively to  Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, will also be in New York and has an appointment to meet Zardari of Pakistan.

Palin was supposed to participate in a rally protesting the participation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the U.N., but her invitation was withdrawn after Democratic protest and the pullout of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, from the event.

The McCain campaign released the remarks Palin would have made at the rally:

"Tomorrow, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will come to New York — to the heart of what he calls the Great Satan — and speak freely in this, a country whose demise he has called for. Ahmadinejad may choose his words carefully, but underneath all of the rhetoric is an agenda that threatens all who seek a safer and freer world," Palin would have said. "We gather here today to highlight the Iranian dictator’s intentions and to call for action to thwart him. He must be stopped."