Rice Enters Middle East Arena With Few Friends for Company

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2107893,00.html

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice embarks on a high-stakes Middle East mission Sunday, with the United States increasingly estranged from European and Arab allies over the crisis.

Rice's trip, for talks with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and an international conference on the crisis in Rome, comes as more bloodshed in Lebanon spurs mounting calls for a muscular US role to end the fighting.

But her mission will bear little resemblance to the multi-day, multi-city Middle East peace shuttles of some of her predecessors which are part of US diplomatic lore.

"I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and starting shuttling around and it wouldn't have been clear what I was shuttling to do," Rice said on Friday.

What she will not do, is accept rising demands from European and Arab states for an immediate ceasefire in Israel's battle against Hezbollah, regarding such a step as a "false promise" bound to simply incubate future conflicts.



But CNN keeps telling me they all love Condi to death over there. Someones been lying to me again.

[hlthe2b]

1. So is this meant to bring to mind the image of Condi...

entering the arena, as the sacrificial Christian, to the lions?


Given all the codespeak they've been resorting to lately, I wonder...

[tularetom]

2. WTF is her excuse?

* can at claim to be utterly clueless and brain dead when the shit hits the fan but this woman has a PhD for chrissakes. Oh well maybe she can give Chirac a back rub or something else.

[TahitiNut]

3. Education rarely cures insanity.

:shrug:

[DELUSIONAL]

4. hard to . . . type .... laughing too hard!!!!!!!!

thanks ......!!!!!!!! ..................

[magellan]

5. Remember her area of expertise was Soviet Russia

...and she didn't even foresee their collapse. Erudite intellects lead this country, none of them have real-world experience worth spitting at.