The Hill News

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney met Monday with Afghanistan's president shortly before Vice President Biden was scheduled to sit down with the leader.

Romney, a potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate, met with President Hamid Karzai in Kabul on a stop in a tour intended to burnish his foreign-policy credentials.

An aide to Romney confirmed the meeting, which had previously been planned, and the former Massachusetts governor will continue on his trip and meet with the leaders of Jordan and Israel later this week.

Romney's meeting with Karzai, though, comes on the same day that Biden made a surprise trip to Afghanistan to check up on the U.S. military's progress in that country.

Biden arrived Monday evening, Kabul time, at the U.S. embassy for a meeting with Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, per a pool report. He plans a meeting with Karzai later Monday.