Rice displays deft diplomacy
Posted: Monday, May 07, 2007 10:03 AM
By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Tel Aviv Bureau Chief
Americans often ask me why they’re so unpopular in the Arab world. Finally I have a story that explains it.
For sheer obtuseness and poor manners, it was hard to beat the performance of Sean McCormack, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, while managing his boss’s press conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt on Friday.
When Condoleezza Rice finished her presentation to a crowded room of journalists at the two-day regional conference on Iraq, McCormack threw the floor open to questions.
Practically every reporter in the very large room put up his or her hand. The small group of American reporters who traveled from Washington with Rice were seated together up front, along with their minders from the State Department: they make up what everyone refers to as the "Traveling Bubble."
McCormack pointed to one of the American reporters to ask his question, then to another, and then to another. Finally he said, “One more question,” and pointed to yet another American reporter from inside the "Bubble."
At this point one of the few hundred other reporters in the room shouted, “How about a question in Arabic?”
Antennae up
Fortunately, Rice has much sharper antennae than her Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, because she immediately picked up on the appalling impression created by McCormack’s limited worldview.
She insisted on continuing to answer questions, from Arab journalists and from Iranians too, giving detailed and exact responses to their many questions. She said to McCormack, “You’ve lost control!” They both laughed, but I believe the subtext was clear.
As Rice emphatically and expertly explained American policy on Iran, I kept my eyes fixed on the reactions of two Iranian journalists sitting nearby. Both listened intently and silently to every word. One nodded as if in agreement throughout. When Rice finished, the one reporter looked at the other, and they discussed the U.S. Secretary of State in obviously appreciative tones.
It was a tour de force of intuition and explanation by Rice; and the opposite by McCormack. His performance left Arab reporters in no doubt – America has no interest in their questions. Fortunately Rice did, and turned the Great Satan back into Uncle Sam.
