Oman's ambassador to the U.S., Hunaina bint Sultan bin Ahmad al-Mughairi, was doing some serious mingling among the Democratic foreign policy elite at the Denver Art Museum.

``I'm networking,'' al-Mughairi, the Arab world's first female ambassador to the U.S., said yesterday as she moved among fellow envoys from overseas and would-be diplomats from the U.S. ``It's good to get to know people before they take office.''

She is among more than 100 ambassadors and 500 other foreign dignitaries in Denver this week for the Democratic National Convention. It's an unprecedented number for a political convention, according to past participants in such events. The visitors include the Irish ambassador to the U.S., the chairman of Georgia's parliament, a Supreme Court justice from Bangladesh and a Finnish parliamentarian who is also a former Miss Finland.

``There are definitely more diplomats this time and I would also say a bigger number of panels organized,'' said Claudia Fritsche, Liechtenstein's ambassador to the U.S., who attended both the Democratic and Republican conventions in Boston and New York in 2004. ``And that reflects the really, really much increased attention this election is getting everywhere overseas.''

Buses and Receptions

The ambassadors are being bused around Denver by the National Democratic Institute, a Washington-based organization created and funded in part by the U.S. government, which has arranged panel discussions, receptions and convention credentials for the envoys, who are staying 11 miles outside the city center at the Denver Airport Marriott hotel for lack of space in town.

State Department protocol officers are also on hand to make sure the diplomats are taken care of.

The diplomats are packing events around Denver with a foreign policy focus, sponsored by advocacy groups and research organizations, in an effort to glean early insights into how a Barack Obama administration would affect their country.

``It's truly a program that keeps us busy from morning to evening,'' Fritsche said. Like most of the others, Fritsche will travel to Minnesota next week for the Republican National Convention.

Russia Engagement

At a forum organized by the Truman National Security Project, a leadership institute for Democrats, Georgian officials listened as William Perry, a former U.S. defense secretary and now an Obama adviser, called for greater U.S. engagement with Russia after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recognized the independence of two Georgian territories.

``We very much appreciate Georgia is a bipartisan issue,'' said David Bakradze, the chairman of Georgia's parliament whose media appearances around Denver were being organized by the Washington-based public relations firm, the Glover Park Group.

Qubad Talabani, the representative of northern Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government in Washington -- and the son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani -- moves quickly from event to event, pressing his hand into that of one of Obama's top foreign policy advisers.

``Don't forget us,'' he told Susan Rice, referring to Iraq's Kurds, as he greeted her at a reception at Denver's Athletic Club. The event was sponsored by the National Security Network, which advocates foreign-policy solutions for progressive Democrats.

Kurds' Concerns

Talabani worries that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could leave the Kurds vulnerable and wants American troops to remain at least in the oil-rich, Kurdish areas. Those areas were protected against Saddam Hussein by a U.S.-patrolled no-fly zone before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Rice is just one of several Obama foreign policy advisers making the rounds. They also include Tony Lake, a former national security adviser to Bill Clinton; Greg Craig, Obama's chief national security adviser, and former Navy secretary Richard Danzig.

Prominent personalities from Hillary Clinton's foreign policy team are here, too, notably former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke.