What Makes Condi Run?

By Elaine Shannon

ACCORDING TO A SOURCE IN the State Department, Jim Wilkinson, a senior adviser to Condoleezza Rice, recently asked the department's historian for a list of countries that have never been visited by a U.S. Secretary of State. An unlikely Trivial Pursuit question, his inquiry signals that Rice's travels, which have already taken her to 11 countries in her first six weeks on the job, will be more extensive than most of her predecessors'. "The Secretary will travel when there's serious diplomatic work to be done," says Wilkinson. "There's no better diplomacy than personal contact."

After three trips to Europe and visits to Jerusalem, Ramallah and Mexico City, Rice is taking her frequent-flyer diplomacy on a six-nation mission to Asia this week. Even skeptics who wrote off her early forays as standard grip-and-grin fare are beginning to pay attention. ("She's doing quite well because she's saying all those things that she and the President prevented [former Secretary of State] Colin Powell from saying for four years," says Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.) One important move: the U.S. agreeing to a plan forged by the British, French and Germans to offer Iran trade incentives if it abandons its nuclear-weapons program. In return, the Europeans will back Bush's plan to ask the U.N. Security Council for punitive sanctions if Iran keeps pursuing the Bomb. Rice also appears to support a controversial French plan to pacify the Shi'ite militant organization Hizballah by letting it play a formal role in Lebanese politics.

Rice's travel routine is grueling. Her 15-hour days typically start at 5 a.m., when she hits the elliptical machine in her hotel's fitness center. After her Asian tour (which will take her to Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Japan, China and South Korea), she will attend a meeting next month in Santiago, Chile, on emerging democracies. Rice has visited eight NATO nations, and by summer, she or her deputy, Robert Zoellick, plan to travel to the remaining 17. By then, she may be ready to tackle Wilkinson's list. --By Elaine Shannon