Rwanda? Check. Afghanistan? Check. Saudi Arabia? Check. Canada? Check. Taiwan? Checked off the list yesterday

Move over, Condi Rice.

Governor Mitt Romney has been receiving quite a lot of visitors lately, and they aren't exactly from Worcester. In the last 2 1/2 years, the governor has held nearly three-dozen meetings with high-ranking dignitaries from every continent but Antarctica.

The governor's expanding international Rolodex includes Prince Edward of Great Britain, the president of Mongolia, and the ambassador of Pakistan. Last month, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia, stopped by. A few months before, it was Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong of China.

Could it be that Romney is trying to add heft to foreign policy credentials that are not quite as weighty as those of his potential competitors for the GOP presidential nomination, such as Senator John McCain of Arizona? Not so, his aides insist.

''There hasn't been an uptick in these meetings, it's something he's done all along," said Corbie Kiernan, a spokeswoman for the governor. ''But I can't opine on whether or not it's boosting his foreign-relations credentials."

Yesterday morning, Ying-Jeou Ma, the mayor of Taipei, dropped by the State House for a half-hour private tête-à-tête in Romney's office, followed by a press briefing attended by an entourage of aides and Taiwanese press. It was a meeting right out of a diplomat's handbook. There were gifts: Ma gave Romney a ceramic orchid in a wooden frame, and Romney presented his guest with a crystal bowl etched with the state seal. There was important-sounding conversation: They talked about economic development, as well as their experiences at Harvard Law School (both are alums).

And there was diplomatic-speak afterward: ''It's important to keep the relationships open and strong and maintain dialogue and share information," Kiernan said.

Some of Romney's dignitary acquaintances are famous, such as President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. But he also makes time for the lesser-known diplomats of the world, such as Ambassador Molelekeng Ernestina Rapolaki of Lesotho, an enclave of South Africa that is slightly smaller than Maryland, according to the CIA's World Factbook.

Whenever a head of state is visiting the Commonwealth, the governor's office always offers an arrival ceremony and a meeting with Romney as a courtesy, the governor's press secretary, Eric Fehrnstrom, wrote in an e-mail response to questions.

The governor's ''Operations Office" provides Romney with a background briefing on the guest he's about to meet and, if necessary, advice on specific protocol. (When Romney attends Archbishop Sean O'Malley's elevation ceremony in Rome this week, the office ''will advise him on appropriate forms of interaction with Vatican officials," Fehrnstrom wrote.) Though Romney speaks French, most of the foreign dignitaries speak with him in English. Occasionally, a translator helps.

Sometimes the meetings have a specific purpose. Last fall, Roberto Formigoni, president of the biotech-heavy Lombardy region of Italy, was in town to join Romney in announcing a biotech partnership agreement with Massachusetts. When Ambassador David Manning of Great Britain came to Boston last September, he and Romney planted a tree on the east side of the State House in memory of the victims of the London subway bombings, said Terri Evans, a public affairs officer for the British consulate in Boston.

Some are less memorable. Bob Zhang, assistant to the Chinese ambassador, could offer no details on where the two met or what they talked about. ''He travels a lot," Zhang said of his boss.