Rice to take UK's Miliband to California hometown

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Determined to show him life outside Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will take Britain's foreign secretary to her California hometown this week, the State Department said on Tuesday.

David Miliband, who arrives in Washington later on Tuesday, will accompany Rice on Thursday to Palo Alto where she was provost of Stanford University and plans to return at the end of the Bush administration in January 2009.

"For her, it is personal. She is able to share with one of her close colleagues a little bit of her life," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

McCormack said Rice also wanted to show Miliband companies in Silicon Valley, the epicenter of the high-tech industry in the United States.

The two will tour Internet giant Google on Thursday as well as Bloom Energy, which focuses on alternative energy, and meet entrepreneurs and venture capitalists on the "cutting edge" of high-technology, said McCormack.

The visit is similar to one made in 2005 by Britain's then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who went to Birmingham, Alabama, with Rice. Among other highlights, they visited her elementary school.

Rice toured Straw's hometown of Blackburn and Liverpool in March 2006, a follow-up visit notable for the thousands of protesters who greeted her on every stop to demand an end to the Iraq war.

(Reporting by Sue Pleming; Editing by John O'Callaghan)