The US presidential election is going international as Republican rival John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin will be joining an annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations this week.
Details of their visit to New York remain sketchy, reported dpa.
McCain has accepted an invitation to speak at former president Bill Clinton's Global Initiative Foundation, which focuses on climate change, energy and development issues and will include more than 50 current and former heads of state.
McCain's Democratic rival Barack Obama has no official plans to visit New York but has agreed to address the Clinton foundation's annual meeting via satellite.
It is not clear whether McCain will attend US President George W Bush's final address before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
McCain has kept his distance from the unpopular president and fellow Republican, instead campaigning as a reform-minded candidate who can shake up the Washington establishment.
McCain is also giving Palin a chance to join in the global diplomacy in a bid to bolster her foreign policy credentials. Palin will hold a private meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and possibly other foreign leaders, according to US media reports.
McCain, 72, has travelled abroad regularly and met numerous foreign leaders during his presidential run and over 26 years as a member of Congress.
Palin, 44, was a little-known, first-term Alaska governor until being touted as McCain's running mate last month. She obtained a US passport for the first time last year to visit Alaskan troops in Kuwait, and has been criticized by Democrats as unprepared for the vice presidency.
Obama, 47, a one-term senator from Illinois, has also come under fire for a lack of foreign policy experience. In July, after clinching the Democratic nomination, he made a well-publicized trip to the Middle East and Europe.
The electioneering began well before any candidates arrived in New York. A planned protest Monday of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to New York was catapulted into the political spotlight after Palin said she would speak at the rally.
That forced New York Senator Hillary Clinton, a one-time rival and now supporter of Obama, to cancel her own plans to attend the rally, which has been organized by US Jewish groups.
With the event turning into a partisan spectacle, Palin was disinvited - a move slammed by the McCain campaign as the result of pressure from "democratic partisans."
"There will be no politicians at the rally," an official at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "We could not have any American politicians because it's a nonpartisan event."
Ahmadinejad for his part said this week that he was willing to hold a televised debate with both McCain and Obama. The Iranian president arrives in New York Monday.