Mixed media: New age diplomat

Little substance

AMERICAN BROADCASTER: "The real issue is whether Europe is an independent ... partner of the US, and a partner does not mean that you necessarily agree on all points, or [whether] Europe forms part of the Atlantic entity led by the United States. I think this question is not solved yet," said Bernard Cassen, managing editor of the French monthly Le Monde Diplomatique.

While analysts say Ms Rice was successful in beginning the healing process between the United States and Europe, they say she did not provide new policy initiatives. Experts say the trip was full of symbolism, but lacked substance.

* Voice of America

SCEPTICAL READER: Only a handful of the Paris Institute of Political Studies' 5500 students were allowed near the auditorium where Rice spoke and the initial questions were vetted by the school and the State Department.

What was Rice afraid of? The truth, perhaps? The real story is how this administration stages events and why the media reports them as news.

* Reader's letter in The Arizona Republic

MIDDLE EAST WEBSITE: In eight days, she visited nine countries and one territory, gave 18 TV and newspaper interviews, held 13 press conferences and said - umpteen times - that it's the United States' urgent mission to spread freedom worldwide.

It's an aggressive programme, sort of a neoconservative plan minus the US troops and bombs. Aides say Rice is deliberately offering a vision that will ease European fears of another US invasion - perhaps of Iran - but that also contains a clear foreign policy goal. Whether Rice will succeed in selling it remains to be seen.

* Middle East North Africa Financial Network

BLACK AMERICAN VIEW: Rice's substance in the various capitals was, as usual, on the light side. But even those of us who find Rice rather annoying and are ashamed of her allegiance to such an arrogant administration, have to admit that, when it came to style, Rice represented.

Perhaps the next black woman secretary of state will take it a step further. Maybe she will upgrade the current occupant's package (Rice's term) by aligning herself with an administration that does not believe it is the world's strict daddy. She will lend her talents to an administration that understands the world is not really its oyster and does not mistake warm receptions and rapt admirers for conciliation or accord.

* Black America Web

Charm offensive

AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPER: Condoleezza Rice conducted an impressive charm offensive during her tour of Europe last week. The new Secretary of State presented a more elegant face, spoke a more nuanced language and played a sweeter mood-music than most Bush administration officials the Europeans have dealt with. And the grand strategy she unfolded is breathtakingly ambitious. It deserves to be studied carefully.

* The Age, Melbourne

WICHITA VIEW: Not since Jackie Kennedy has an American woman impressed the French so much. Now comes Condoleezza Rice - poised, cool, an intellectual who plays classical piano. Rice doesn't fit Europe's stereotype of a loud, brash New World bumpkin ...

It was clear from European press coverage that Rice earned respect for her "courage", as several French academics put it, for taking her diplomatic roadshow to the heart of Europe's discontent about the war in Iraq.

* Wichita Eagle

NEW YORK ANGLE: While [Ms Rice] is seeking to repair America's alliance with western Europe, she hasn't done it on bended knee, but by standing tall for Mr Bush's policies - especially the "pursuit of global freedom" ... Yet she also made clear that nations like France and Germany must not obstruct efforts to bring Iran into the fellowship of civilised nations ...

New York Post

UTAH PRAISE: Rice's trip proved the Woody Allen truism that 80 per cent of life is showing up. If you are willing to stand before a potentially hostile foreign audience and explain US policy, or stand next to a foreign counterpart and take sceptical questions from reporters, your very act of being there wins points. And when you are as winsome as Condi Rice, you might actually move some people. Has Gerhard Schroeder yet fully recovered from his Rice-induced swoon?

* Salt Lake Tribune