Condi on the Rise

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For someone who, as National Security Adviser during Bush's first term, often seemed overwhelmed by rivals in the war Cabinet, Rice has displayed striking confidence in her early forays as a diplomat. Foreign officials note that she likes to play solo, holding meetings without a phalanx of regional experts. Others report that she is unexpectedly generous with her time, even to countries that have been sharply critical of the U.S. At the Sharm el-Sheikh summit in February between Arab and Israeli leaders, Rice met with all the participants individually but steered clear of the summit to avoid the appearance of U.S. overreach. And an Israeli official notes that in private negotiating sessions, Rice has a clever way of pushing hard on an issue, even if only to elicit a vague agreement. But then she immediately doubles down. "She'll restate it in a firmer way," says this official, "and then pocket it as a commitment." Says an Arab diplomat: "This one is nimble, very nimble."

But Rice's best asset is her direct line to the Oval Office. "You get the feeling as you speak to her and listen to her," said an official who met with her in Europe last month, "that you are actually listening to the President's voice. You don't have to make a calculation about whether this is the view of all the government in Washington--or just part of it."

Rice needed all those moves and more last week, as she shuttled across Asia on her first swing through that region. What she brought back home was not immediately tangible. Unable to win from India or Pakistan an agreement to halt participation in a natural-gas pipeline from Iran, a country that the U.S. would like to isolate, she repeatedly emphasized that Washington backs recent efforts by both nations to mend their 58-year bitter dispute over the divided region of Kashmir. After stops in Afghanistan and Tokyo, where she called for greater democracy across Asia, Rice moved on to Seoul before flying to Beijing, where the real work of the trip was waiting.

China put out a small welcome mat before she arrived, releasing its most prominent political prisoner, Muslim business executive Rebiya Kadeer, after five years in jail--a move designed to remove the issue of human rights from the bilateral agenda. But Rice's overriding goal was to find a way to restart the six-way talks among North Korea, the U.S., China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, stalled since Pyongyang confirmed in early February that it possessed nuclear weapons. Bush and Rice have long believed that the best way to disarm Kim Jong Il is to persuade China, which has the greatest stake in the region, to muscle the North Koreans into multilateral talks. Lately, the Chinese have been cool to cutting North Korea's aid to get them back to the table. China's Foreign Minister has even hinted that the U.S. should engage the North Koreans directly, something Bush has ruled out. And so Rice's goal was to put the Chinese back on track. There's no guarantee that the talks can be restarted, and even if they are, it's just as uncertain how the U.S. and its allies can force the North Koreans to give up their hard-won arsenal.