Reporters notebook: Rice's time running short

[babylonsister]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/18551.html

Reporters notebook: Rice's time running short
By Warren Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers

Updated: 9:53 a.m. EDT 7/31/07

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top aides have been debating for weeks whether she should spend her last months in office on Middle East shuttle diplomacy.

Now the answer is clear: yes.

Rice, speaking to a mixed throng of Western and Arab journalists, promised she'd come back again — and again — to try to advance peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

"I expect to be frequently here," Rice said she told eight Arab foreign ministers gathered at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik.

It won't actually be shuttle diplomacy, strictly defined. Rice has no plans to stay in the region for weeks on end, as Henry Kissinger did in the 1970s, when the term was coined.

But she will be flying across the Atlantic and Europe a lot, in advance of a planned Middle East peace summit in the fall.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit said Arab countries want to help Rice achieve her Middle East goals in the next 17 months, "which is the life of the (Bush) administration."

It was a none-too-subtle reminder that Rice's time is running short.

[Supersedeas]

1. oh, yea -- she is supposed to earn that govt paycheck

[JTFrog]

2. She should be serving her last months

in jail and then some. What ever happened to the subpoena she snubbed her nose at?