Europeans are warily optimistic about Rice as secretary of state

BERLIN — European leaders have reacted to the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state with public optimism and private skepticism about the possibilities of a new start after the difficult days leading up to the war in Iraq.

"Here's a prediction," Josef Joffe, co-editor of the weekly Die Zeit wrote in an editorial on Thursday, "relations with Europe will get better," adding that they could not get worse than they were in 2002 and 2003.

But as Joffe's slightly barbed prediction suggests, for close and easy relations to develop between the United States and much of Europe, a huge gulf of recent distrust and difference will have to be overcome. It is not a secret that most Europeans and their leaders were hoping that Sen. John Kerry would win the election.

In Europe, among the main strengths seen in Rice, now the national security adviser, is her closeness to President Bush and her penchant for straight talk. But it is those very strengths that could get in the way of a trans-Atlantic rapprochement. It all depends on whether the Bush administration really wants to work with Europe.

"She's efficient," a European Union official in Brussels, Belgium, said. "She gets straight to the point. The question is that sometimes we don't see eye to eye on the point."

"The good thing is that we have a working relationship with her," the official continued. "But we're going to feel the change, too."

Eberhard Sandschneider, director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, put a similar idea this way, comparing Rice with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. "She's close to Bush, part of the neocon group," referring to neoconservatives in the Bush administration. "But she's not a professional politician and she's also an academic, and the fact that she's close to the president is important for her standing in Europe."

"With Powell you never knew whether his policies would have influence with the president," he said, but if Rice "says 'x,' you know that the president will also say 'x.' "

Many Europeans, including Sandschneider, argue that it is far too early to make firm predictions about the kind of secretary of state Rice will be, though her nomination has been interpreted in two interrelated ways.