Un ami me reproche (gentiment) de ne rien écrire sur Condoleezza Rice. Mais qu'ajouter (puisque les métaphores de patinage artistique sont de rigueur avec elle) à un sans faute? Son voyage au Proche-Orient et en Europe a été impressionnant de précision et de clarté, que ce soit vis-à-vis d'Israël, de l'Autorité palestinienne, de la Françallemagne, de l'Union européenne ou de l'ONU, et il semble qu'elle va continuer sur cette lancée: le temps ou Colin Powell, peu sûr de ses arrières, n'osait guère quitter Washington est révolu.

In an answer to a question from the floor, she told her audience that in 1947 Greece and Turkey had suffered through civil wars. Greece, yes, but Turkey?

"It was a glaring mistake," said Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States, an independent research organization at the French Institute of International Relations. "She's smart, yes, but I don't think she is as knowledgeable as one would expect with a career like hers."

She shocked at least some of her guests by branding Iran a "totalitarian state," said four of those who took part. She added that the free world was wrong to accept the Soviet Union on its terms during the cold war and must not make the same mistake now with Iran, they added.

A number of guests challenged her assertion, but Ms. Rice is not the type to back down. She called her characterization of Iran deliberate. A year ago, she said, she would have called Iran's Islamic Republic authoritarian. But after flawed parliamentary elections last spring that produced a conservative majority, she said, it moved toward totalitarian, a term that historians tend to use restrictively to define violently absolutist regimes that govern through terror.

While most of the discussion focused on Iran, Ms. Rice was much more willing to absolve Pakistan's military-led government of any tyrannical tendencies. When Mr. Parmentier called Pakistan "the most dangerous country there is," Ms. Rice acknowledged that the country was dangerous but said it was "on the right track" and "improving," participants said.