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U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Saudi Arabia's appointed advisory council on Thursday, taking a chance to sit on the speaker's chair in the all-male house -- while it was empty.



"It's a nice view from here," Pelosi, who this year became the first woman speaker of the U.S. Congress, said inside the empty room where 150 men appointed by the king debate laws and make recommendations to the cabinet.

Thursday is a rest day for the house, the Shura Council.



"This chair is very comfortable -- as long as there are no members," Pelosi joked, referring to the tough job of managing legislative assemblies.



She arrived from Damascus where she met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a two-day trip that President George W. Bush -- who is trying to ostracise Syria -- slammed as "counterproductive" and sending "mixed signals".



Saudi reform activists presented a petition to King Abdullah this week asking for free elections to an elected parliament, but some of them have been arrested.



Expectations of progress on social and political reform in the U.S.-allied absolute monarchy, where political parties are banned, have been high since the king took the throne in 2005.



Women cannot drive, face restrictions in the workplace and hold no high positions of public office, which is how clerics of Saudi Arabia's strict form of Islam say things should remain.



"After 200 years in the United States we finally have a (woman) speaker, it look us a long time," Pelosi, a Democrat leader, told reporters after talks with her Saudi counterpart.



She said talks in Saudi Arabia, which included a visit to King Abdullah's ranch on Wednesday night, covered women's rights and Saudi Arabia's diplomatic efforts to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict and other regional tensions.



Her tour reflects a tug-of-war between Democrats and President George W. Bush over foreign policy.



Saudi Arabia has embarked on intensive diplomacy in recent months to ease violent clashes and strife in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, but diplomats in Riyadh say the Bush administration's response has been lukewarm.



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