The unflaggingly acerbic British press was less than kind to Rice on her visit, taking off on her fashion choices as well as her politics.
BLACKBURN: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a second stop in this small British town on Saturday on a visit shaping up as a public relations nightmare on which little has gone completely as planned.
Anti-Iraq protests again dogged Rice and her host, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, as they made another foray into the former mill town of 100,000 best known as a footnote in a Beatles song.
Some 200 demonstrators posting banners proclaiming “War on terror, war on Islam” and “Bring the troops home” greeted the two as they arrived at the town hall to meet with local Muslim leaders.
At a joint news conference, Rice reacted to a statement by her host, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, that the Guantanamo detention centre was “an anomaly,” by saying the US would close the facility the day it was no longer needed. “The United States does not desire to keep Guantanamo in being any longer than it is needed,” she said. “We don’t want to be the world's jailer,” she said.
Rice came to northwest England on what was supposed to be a feel-good visit to Straw’s constituency to repay his October trip to her home state of Alabama. But the journey was plagued by problems from the start.
Hopes of meeting former Beatle Paul McCartney fell through, a mosque withdrew its invitation and a local luminary lined up to host a concert in nearby Liverpool pulled out as a political statement.
The unflaggingly acerbic British press was less than kind to Rice on her visit to the United States’ staunchest wartime ally, taking off on her fashion choices as well as her politics.
“Miss Rice may be the most powerful woman in the world but she came dressed like a princess in a mauve trouser suit, pearls and metallic bronze stiletto shoes,” the Daily Telegraph wrote. The Independent accompanied its account with a cartoon depicting a restaurant called “Blackburn Tandoori” with a sign from the management on its front door, “We regret we do not serve Rice.”
On a trip designed as diplomatic puffery, Rice also managed to make some unwanted headlines with an admission at a foreign policy forum Friday that the United States had made “thousands” of tactical errors in Iraq. Rice asserted that whatever tactical failures there may have been, the strategic decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power had been right. “Saddam Hussein was not going anywhere without a military intervention,” she said.
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