Rice tries to patch up European friendships
Trying to mend fences with Europe, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today “it is time to turn away from the disagreements of the past” that alienated long-time allies over the invasion of Iraq.
France was the most vocal opponent of President Bush’s handling of the war with Iraq, and the new secretary of state deliberately chose Paris for the major address of her first official tour of Europe.
But Rice did not back down from Bush’s pledge to spread freedom across the globe.
In a speech at Paris’s Sciences Politiques, she said: ”America stands ready to work with Europe on our common agenda and Europe must stand ready to work with America.”
“After all, history will surely judge us not by our old disagreements, but by our new achievements,” she said.
Sciences Politiques, known in France as Sciences Po, is a school of political science that has been at the centre of recent debate over America’s reach and power.
Rice said the founders of both the French and US republics were inspired by the same values – freedom, democracy and human dignity – and by each other. History has shown that revolutions striving for freedom can start in mundane ways but need outside help, she said.
“In my own experience, a black woman named Rosa Parks was just tired one day of being told to sit in the back of the bus,” Rice said. “So she refused to move, and she launched a revolution for freedom in the American South.”
Similar was the power of Lech Walesa and his workers strike in Poland, Afghans and Iraqis who recently voted after years of repression and ordinary men and women who helped bring down the Berlin Wall in 1989.
“Yet that day of freedom in November 1989 could never have happened without the full support of the free nations of the West,” she said.
“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.
Rice said, “America has everything to gain” from having a stronger Europe as a partner.
“It is time to turn away from the disagreements of the past,” Rice said. “It is time to open a new chapter in our relationship, and a new chapter in our alliance.”
