Rice’s stopover to mend fences

PARIS - Few visits by a United States Secretary of State to France have stirred so much speculation as the brief stopover that Condoleezza Rice will make in Paris on Wednesday.

There are mounting hopes that Rice will help repair the crippled relationship between Washington and the leading representative of "Old Europe", despised by American neo-conservatives for opposing the Iraq War.

But the big question is whether Rice's approach will go beyond rhetoric. The widespread bet is that she will hand out a feel-good message to a long-standing but alienated friend, and dangle the prospect of a place for it in President George W. Bush's vision of the world - yet without offering any major change in the strategy itself.

Rice will meet President Jacques Chirac and thereafter Foreign Minister Michel Barnier. Before then, she will make a key speech in Paris on US-European relations.

"She wanted to do it [the speech] in Paris, because she felt Paris was one of the places where there's a lot of debate and discussion about the US, about Europe, about common goals, about how we achieve our agenda, and that she wanted to be part of that discussion," Rice's spokesman, Richard Boucher, said.

The chances of a rapprochement, in tone if not in substance, are good.

Just two years ago, Rice was a hawkish National Security Advisor who indirectly fomented French-bashing in Washington. Referring to the trio of countries who constituted an anti-war coalition, Rice is memorably quoted as advising Bush to "punish France, ignore Germany and forgive Russia".

But after Bush's re-election in November, and as she headed towards succeeding Colin Powell as America's senior diplomat, Rice talked up reconciliation.

Her first foreign trip in her new job is a model of even-handedness, taking her to talks with both parties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as to European supporters of the Iraq War (Britain, Italy, Poland) and critics (Belgium, France, Germany).

Britain, in particular, is worried about the rise of anti-American feeling in Europe over the past couple of years and is pressing Washington to do more to ease the resentment. By choosing Paris as the location for her first major speech since taking office, Rice is tending an olive branch.

On bilateral relations, the smart money is that she will also sound out France for a potential role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is one area where America and Europe have inched towards convergence since the changing of the diplomatic guard in Washington and in the Palestinian leadership.

Rice has won applause in Europe and among Palestinians for swiftly embracing Palestinian statehood, saying that peace can only come with a viable Palestinian state.

France has some strong cards in the Middle East which it could play to help secure a future US-led peace deal. It has good relations with Arab states and particularly the Palestinians, especially since it treated the dying Yasser Arafat with the honours of a head of state.

But France will be wary of any pressure by Rice to get involved in the Iraq War, even through hands-off initiatives such as training Iraqi troops and police.

Another sticking point is Iran. Europe is using diplomacy in its bid to freeze Tehran's nuclear programme and is quietly dismayed by Washington's threats of economic sanctions and sabre-rattling.

"At the moment, they [Europe and America] are playing good-cop, bad-cop," said a source. "But how much longer can it go on like that?"

Environment is a big source of conflict. The United Nations' Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gases enters into force on February 16, championed by Europe but badly damaged by its rejection by Bush.

But on these and other points of conflict, little is likely to be heard in Paris in public at least.

"Powell was well liked and widely admired, but European diplomats never felt he truly represented the Bush Administration, and many saw him as a powerless negotiating partner because of his famous splits with Cabinet hawks," said the German news weekly Der Spiegel.