Rice may postpone Congo trip, plans another time

WASHINGTON, July 11 (Reuters) US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will likely postpone a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo next week, a State Department official said today.

Rice had been due to make a fleeting visit to Congo on July 18, stopping over on her way back from the Middle East and en route to Ghana where she still plans to attend a conference.

She would have been the highest level US official to go to the central African country since former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited there in 1997.

''It's increasingly likely it (trip to Congo) will be postponed to some later date,'' said the State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He said Congo could be included in a longer trip to Africa that Rice planned at an unspecified time.

''From the secretary's standpoint the most important reason here is so that she can spend some more time in Africa, have a more high quality trip in terms of the time she spent there and the meetings she's able to have,'' said the official.

''This was going to be a relatively brief stop and she wanted to see if we could do something a bit longer,'' the official added. Rice had planned to be in the capital Kinshasa for about four hours.

Since becoming secretary of state 2 1/2 years ago, Rice has traveled rarely to sub-Saharan Africa, going to Liberia in January 2006 for the inauguration of its president and making a trip to Sudan and Senegal in July 2005.

The official said Rice still planned to go to the Ghanaian capital Accra for a forum gathering many of the 38 sub-Saharan African countries that get trade benefits under the 7-year-old US African Growth and Opportunity Act.

REUTERS RKM BST0040