Rice on the road
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is leaving for a ten stop trip to Europe and the Middle East.
Yahoo/Reuters has
this cute story:
bq.
Rice tells press "Don't get lost"
With Americans suffering a reputation as geographically challenged, Condoleezza Rice has handed out pocket atlases to the U.S. press corps on her first trip abroad as Secretary of State.
bq. "I would not want anybody to feel lost" the former university provost quipped as she handed out 18 copies of the books on her plane.
And the reason for her trip:
bq. The souvenir for journalists of her inaugural eight-day, 10-stop trip to Europe and the Middle East was also Rice's way of showing she will travel widely to fulfil her pledge that "
the time for diplomacy is now."
bq. Her predecessor Colin Powell was criticised for travelling too little when some more face-to-face diplomacy might have helped win over allies to radical U.S. policies.
bq. Asked by reporters whether the presents were a portent of heavy travel schedules for the new top U.S. diplomat, Rice smiled and replied: "You will see."
Emphasis mine. And I bet that she will not be dispensing the kind of "diplomacy" that the Middle Easterners are used to getting from the United Nations and Europe either. She rocks! I am very much looking forward to the next four years -- things are going to get interesting, really really interesting...
Posted by DaveH at February 4, 2005 5:23 PM