Breakfast With Blair As Rice Starts European Tour

Condoleezza Rice, George Bush's new secretary of state, began her week-long tour of Europe and the Middle East today by holding talks with Tony Blair at Downing Street.

The pair were discussing Iraq and the Middle East peace process during a working breakfast meeting. Ms Rice is keen to convince European leaders that the Bush administration is serious about pushing for a lasting peace in the region, as well as repairing relations with Europe following the US-led invasion of Iraq.

As they went into the meeting, Mr Blair said: "We will be discussing Iraq and the Middle East and various other issues and I'm sure it will be an excellent and constructive meeting, as ever."

Ms Rice, who was also due to meet the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, thanked Mr Blair for Britain's backing "as we work to support the Iraqi people in their quest and most especially ... as we try to bring to the Israelis and the Palestinians a chance for a lasting peace."

But she has indicated that the US may take a back seat for now in the international effort to bring about peace. Yesterday she said she had no plans to attend next week's Middle East summit meeting in Egypt, although she is travelling to Jerusalem and the West Bank.

"Not every effort has to be an American effort," she told reporters on her flight to London. "It is extremely important that the parties themselves are taking responsibility. It is extremely important that the regional actors are taking responsibility."

Ms Rice is expected to offer US assistance in training Palestinian security forces when she meets Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Monday. But Palestinian officials are concerned that she will press them to return to a plan put forward by George Tenet, the former CIA director, which requires them to disarm and detain militant groups.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, is reluctant to confront Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other armed groups, preferring to invite them into a comprehensive political and security agreement.

Before arriving in Israel, however, Ms Rice's hectic itinerary will tomorrow take her to Berlin, Warsaw and Ankara. She will stay in Turkey overnight, before meeting the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on Sunday, and then flying to Tel Aviv.

On Monday evening, she will fly to Rome, where the following day she will meet the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and - should his health allow it - the Pope. On Tuesday afternoon, she will face her biggest challenge - delivering a keynote speech on transatlantic relations in Paris - before meeting French ministers on Wednesday, as well as Nato and EU officials in Brussels and Luxembourg.

Ms Rice's week long trip will also pave the way for Mr Bush's own European tour later this month, which will include an EU-US summit.

The issue of Iran was also likely to have come up during Ms Rice and Mr Blair's meeting, after Mr Bush branded the country "the world's primary state sponsor of terror" in his State of the Union address on Wednesday. He also warned that Iran must give up its uranium enrichment programme.

The EU is in negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear ambitions and has invited the US to become involved in the talks, an invitation the Bush administration has so far shown no sign of accepting. Ms Rice failed to adopt a more diplomatic tone yesterday when described Iran's approach to human rights and its treatment of its own citizens as "loathsome".

"I don't think anybody thinks that the unelected mullahs who run that regime are a good thing for the Iranian people and for the region," she said.

Iran's supreme leader replied by insisting that US policies toward Iran would fail. "America is like one of the big heads of a seven-headed dragon," said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "The brains directing it are Zionist and non-Zionist capitalists who brought Bush to power to meet their own interests."