Rice to try calming the softwood furor on trip to Canada: U.S. officials
Condoleezza Rice, making her first trip to Canada on Monday as U.S. secretary of state, will try to quell swirling tensions over the softwood lumber dispute
and showcase co-operation on other fronts.
While Canadian officials don't expect Rice to come armed with a solution to the softwood fight, they'll take the opportunity to argue again that a free trade panel's ultimate decision this summer in favour of Canada must be respected.
They'll make the point that it's difficult to talk about strengthening the continental partnership if decisions under the North American Free Trade Agreement aren't followed.
"There's going to be a stock-taking of where we are" with the North American partnership deal hammered out in Texas earlier this year between Bush, Martin and Mexico's Vincente Fox.
Martin is expected to raise Canada's opposition to U.S. plans to drill for oil in an Alaskan wildlife refuge and discuss global hotspots like Haiti and Sudan with Rice. Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew is sitting in on the meetings.
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Nope, I don't think Ms Rice would be a very good candidate for president, given her internationalist political bent.
Thank you for the ping... more pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Ever since I found out she belongs to the CFR (along with Cheney, Bush Sr., Colin Powell, so many others), I pretty much lost respect for her (and I truly respected her and would have voted for her). I now question everything she does. If only the CFR didn't control the presidential race, we might actually get a good candidate who is conservative and concerned about the peasant middle class.