Rice's first gambit: fix frayed ties to Europe

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on European nations Tuesday to throw their weight behind President Bush's campaign to spread freedom worldwide, and urged them to put past transatlantic arguments behind them.

"It is time to turn away from the disagreements of the past," she said. "It is time to open a new chapter in our relationship and a new chapter in our alliance."

Addressing an audience of French students and foreign-policy specialists, Ms. Rice offered Europe an olive branch of dialogue after three years of troubled relations, dogged by disagreements over Iraq.

She had made Europe her first destination "so we can talk together about how America and Europe can use the power of our partnership to advance our ideals worldwide."

The speech crowned a week-long fence-mending trip to the Middle East and Europe that has won Colin Powell's successor plaudits for making that effort.

"You don't turn the page just like that," says former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who attended the speech. "But we are going in the right direction."

Other observers were disappointed. "It was a conciliatory speech and the tone was very good," says Guillaume Parmentier, head of the French Center on the United States, a think tank in Paris. But "it was not very strong on perspective and imagination beyond the need to spread freedom."

Rice acknowledged that "we have not always seen eye to eye." But she stressed that Washington and Europe do agree on what the threats to international stability are: terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and failed states.

The Secretary of State emphasized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one area where Europe and the US could work together. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas announced a cease-fire hours before Rice spoke in Paris. "We must all be committed to seize this chance," Rice said.

She also asked Europe to help Iraqis rebuild and develop democracy in their country to show "solidarity and generosity" in their relations with Baghdad.

In a nod to European critics who see a US propensity to use force over diplomacy, Rice stressed that freedom "must be chosen. It cannot be given, and it certainly cannot be imposed."

But she insisted that "we on the right side of freedom's divide have an obligation to help those unlucky enough to have been born on the wrong side of that divide."

Several years of bruising differences between Washington and Europe, most notably over the Iraq war, have left the transatlantic relationship strained. European leaders took heart, however, from Rice's explanation at her Senate confirmation hearings that she was visiting Europe "to unite this important alliance behind the kind of great goals that we have."

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