FRANCE: In her first major foreign policy address, the US Secretary of State, Dr Condoleezza Rice, yesterday exhorted Europe to join the United States in a global partnership to spread freedom and democracy, especially in the Arab and Muslim world.
Dr Rice delivered her speech at the 130-year-old Political Science Institute known as "Sciences Po" where many French politicians, including President Jacques Chirac, studied.
Alluding to her experience growing up as a black girl under segregation, she spoke of Rosa Parks who "was just tired one day of being told to sit in the back of the bus ... refused to move, and launched a revolution for freedom in the American South".
Lech Walesa in Poland, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Afghans and Iraqis who recently voted, completed Dr Rice's litany of transitions to freedom.
"Time and again in our shared history, Americans and Europeans have enjoyed our greatest successes for ourselves and for others when we refused to accept an unacceptable status quo, but instead put our values to work for the cause of freedom," she said.
Referring to a reunified Germany within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union, and the end of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, she said: "These achievements have only been possible because Americans and Europeans have stood firm ... Borders between countries cannot be peaceful if tyrants destroy the peace of their societies from within. States where corruption and chaos and cruelty reign invariably pose threats to their neighbours, their regions, and potential threats to the entire international community."
Dr Rice said Europe and the US "have a historic opportunity to shape a global balance of power that favours freedom".
In words recalling the US academic Joseph Nye's theory of "soft power" - usually considered a European rather than an American idea - Dr Rice added: "I used the word power broadly, because even more important than military and economic power is the power of ideas, the power of compassion and the power of hope."
She had travelled to Paris "so that we can talk about how America and Europe can use the power of our partnership to advance our ideals worldwide". Those "on the right side of freedom's divide" had "an obligation to help those unlucky enough to have been born on the wrong side of that divide", she continued.
Europe and the US "have not always seen eye to eye," Dr Rice admitted. "We have had our disagreements. It is time to turn away from the disagreements of the past. It is time to open a new chapter in our relationship, and a new chapter in our alliance.
"America stands ready to work with Europe on our common agenda, and Europe must stand read to work with America ... After all, history will surely judge us not by our old disagreements, but by our new achievements."
She outlined President Bush's Greater Middle East initiative, which seeks to promote reform from Morocco to Pakistan.
"We realise that democratic reform in the Middle East will be difficult and uneven," she said. "Freedom by its very nature must be home-grown. It must be chosen. It cannot be given. It certainly cannot be imposed."
This was a sentiment that Dr Rice's French audience could agree with. Then she seemed to contradict herself by saying: "But spreading freedom in the Arab and Muslim world is also urgent work that cannot be deferred."
She urged the Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon and the President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas to seize what she called "the best chance for peace we are likely to see for years to come".
She noted that Paris and Washington co-sponsored UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for an end to Syrian domination of Lebanon, and hailed upcoming legislative elections there as the fourth democratic elections in the Greater Middle East, following Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq.
"Liberty is ultimately stronger than repression," she said. She relegated Abu Mussab al Zarqawi and other Islamic extremists to "the outer fringes of a great world religion" and said they would be defeated "by the march of human freedom".
A former academic who once believed the US should not engage in nation-building, Dr Rice said the West should push for the freedom and democracy even as it provides development aid. "Development, transparency and democracy reinforce each other. That is why the spread of freedom under the rule of law is our best hope for real progress.
"If we make the pursuit of global freedom the organising principle for the 21st century, we will achieve historic global advances for justice and prosperity, for liberty and peace.
"A global agenda requires a global partnership, so let us multiply our common effort."
Her French hosts may have been surprised to hear Dr Rice praising European unity and the United Nations. In Paris, the Bush administration is often perceived as trying to subvert both.
The transatlantic partnership "will not just endure in this struggle, it will flourish", she concluded. "Because our ties are unbreakable."
During a brief question and answer session, Dr Rice expressed confidence that the religious Shia who appear to have won a majority in the Iraqi election "will find a proper role for Islam in their future" and "will not do to their fellow Iraqis what was done to them".
When a representative of France's Muslim community asked whether there was a single Arab country making an effort to democratise, Dr Rice replied: "The Arab people deserve a better future. This is a part of the world in which the status quo is not going to be acceptable."
Mr Pascal Boulanger, a professor at the American Centre at Sciences Po, later questioned what sort of "pro-active mechanism" the US government has in mind to spread its ideals.
"The rhetoric is beautiful," he said. "But after the rhetoric comes concrete actions. Of course we are all for liberty and democracy, but if it means invading Iran, I don't think people here will buy it."