RI Sen. Reed to visit Southwest Asia this week

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—Rhode Island's U.S. Sen. Jack Reed is slated to travel to Southwest Asia on a fact-finding trip later this week.

Details of Reed's itinerary were not immediately released for security reasons.

But Reed and several other members of a delegation led by Vice President-elect Joe Biden, outgoing chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, were going to gather information -- not to lay out incoming President Barack Obama's position on foreign policy.

According to a statement from a Biden spokeswoman, the bipartisan Senate delegation is also to include incoming chair of the committee John Kerry of Massachusetts and Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.