Rice Goes From the Inside to The Front

Condoleezza Rice can be charming but also direct in her diplomacy, colleagues say.

U.S. officials say that Rice values personal interaction and during the first term has sought to build up overseas contacts through meetings in less structured settings. Starting in September 2003, for example, she organized dinners every two months with her foreign policy counterparts from nine European countries, alternating between the United States and Europe. Rice would choose the topic for the discussions, which are intended to move beyond talking points. No note-takers -- and virtually no officials of lower rank -- are included.

At a dinner at the Watergate hotel a year ago, Rice used the meeting to explain the administration's interest in promoting democracy in the Middle East. Administration officials say the session explained to Europeans the intellectual underpinnings of the idea -- which was controversial at the time.

David Manning, the British ambassador who once was Rice's counterpart at 10 Downing Street, threw a surprise 50th birthday party for Rice in November. More recently, Rice charmed the French when in December she went to the residence of the French ambassador for a private meeting with the foreign minister.

"She attaches a lot of importance to face-to-face interaction," Blacker said. "I will predict that at the end of four years, she will be the most traveled secretary of state in history."

Powell, by contrast, has preferred to transact a lot of business over the phone and is the least traveled secretary of state in three decades.

Rice had made the trip to the Middle East shortly after Bush declared she was his point person for fostering peace between Israelis and Palestinians. But the effort floundered, and she never returned to the region. However, her complaint about the fence -- backed by presidential intervention as well -- did lead the Israeli government to eventually alter the route.

U.S. officials say she already had been closely tracking the debate over the security barrier, but Palestinian and Israeli officials believe the Jericho video presentation -- which the Israelis say was biased -- moved her to confront Sharon. "She was very forceful on the fence," an Israeli official said, declining to be identified. "From that presentation, she seemed to think we were trying to make a land grab here and encircle the Palestinians."

Rice is an avid sports fan. The official said that in later meetings, Rice also took a personal interest in the fact that the Israeli plan would have placed the security barrier right through the soccer field at a Palestinian university, telling the Israelis that as a former provost, she could not understand breaking up the campus.

Though the Bush administration has had exceedingly close relations with Israel -- and has generally avoided putting pressure on the Jewish state -- Rice another time sternly reprimanded Sharon's chief of staff in late 2002 when Israeli forces encircled former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound. She told Dov Weisglass during a White House meeting that the attack was "stupid and counterproductive," according to a former U.S. official present during the exchange.

"Israel has had no better friend than this administration, and no better friend in this administration than me," Rice said, the official recalled. But, she said, "if you have the same conversation with me a week from now, you will have a serious problem in this building and you will have it with me."

Weisglass immediately agreed to negotiate the terms of Israel's pullback.

In July, in what was widely viewed as a possible rehearsal for secretary of state, Rice traveled solo to China, Japan and South Korea. In Beijing, she was confronted by Chinese leaders, who warned her they would "not sit idly by" if arms sales to Taiwan went forward and said that Taiwan is "an obstacle" to U.S.-Chinese relations, according to a U.S. official familiar with the discussions.

Chinese officials appeared to believe that the administration's policies on human rights, democracy, Hong Kong and other issues "added up" to a policy "aimed at regime change in Beijing," the official said. To allay those concerns, Rice, in her meetings, "conveyed that we do not want a weak China," he said. "We want a more confident and transforming China that the rest of the region would welcome."

The pitch may not have been convincing. Just days after her trip, the Chinese Embassy in Washington held a rare news conference to denounce the Bush administration's policies on Taiwan and Hong Kong.