A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the vice president "will be looking to encourage the Saudis as well as other Arab countries to continue to support the international community's efforts to help Iraq."

Cheney also went to the Sultanate of Oman to convince it to do more to confront the Iranian influence in Iraq, but the visit is expected to produce little result.

"He represents a lame duck president, a floundering economy, a situation in which the US, for all its efforts in Iraq, has no leverage on the government in Baghdad," said Simon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

No breakthrough on Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas pledged to try to forge a peace deal before US President George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009 at a conference Bush hosted last November in Annapolis, Maryland.

But little visible progress has been made on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process due to the ongoing violence and Israeli construction on land the Palestinians claim for a future state.

Cheney's tour of Jerusalem and the West Bank was aimed at reinforcing the message from visits by Bush in January and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earlier this month, in a stepped-up diplomatic push for Israelis and Palestinians to move forward on peace efforts.

Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, admitted the situation has deteriorated significantly since the conference, adding that Cheney will "be able to arrest the slide if not necessarily put things on track."

Israel is conducting peace negotiations with Abbas' West Bank-based government while waging a bloody battle with Hamas militants in Gaza.