Word: rice
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...Pressed again for her reaction the roller-coaster developments of the past week, Rice said, with a hint of exasperation, "I don't know. Maybe I'm just not as self-reflective as you think I am. You know, I was thinking, all right, we go from Rome and, kind of, 'What's next...
...back to March 14 of last year, when hundreds of thousands of Lebanese poured into the streets to protest the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and to throw off Syrian occupation.Lebanon's "Cedar Revolution" had been a showcase for the Bush Administration's "democracy agenda," of which Rice was a key architect and proselytizer. If diplomacy didn't resolve the conflict with Israel and drive Hizbollah out of its safe havens, she said, "this hope that was so evident in the events of March 14th and what followed isn't ever going to be realized...
...While neither Rice nor any other person in President Bush?s inner circle voices any misgivings, the reality is, with escalating violence in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, which also held democratic elections over the past year, it?s not just Lebanon?s future but the Administration's democracy-promotion vision that seems imperiled...
...Though Rice didn't say so in blunt terms, the moment when she first heard of the Qana tragedy was a low point. She had been meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz shortly after 8 a.m Sunday when assistant secretary of state David Welch, Rice's point man for Israeli-Arab problems, received an urgent e-mail from U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman in Beirut. Feltman didn't have many facts yet, he and Welch instinctively sensed the potential for derailing Rice's efforts to mediate a cross-border settlement. Welch slipped into the meeting to give Rice a heads...
...didn't help that Peretz knew about the Qana bombing and hadn't mentioned it. As the day wore on and the dimensions of the tragedy became apparent, Rice called a grief-stricken Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora, cancelled her trip to Beirut and in the late afternoon disappeared behind closed doors for an hour-and-a-half meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the second such meeting in as many days. She called President Bush three times during...