The Assyrian Democratic Organization
By Scott Lindlaw
U.S – AP — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday blamed the apparent collapse of a truce in Lebanon on extremists trying to “sow discord” as she renewed the Bush administration’s strong support of the Lebanese government.
“I certainly hope that the Lebanese government will be able to deal with these extremists,” Rice said. “It’s just another example of extremists in the Middle East who are trying to destabilize democratic governments.”
Rice made her comments in a joint appearance with Australia’s foreign minister, Alexander Downer. In Lebanon, heavy exchanges of gunfire erupted Thursday night between Lebanese troops besieging a Palestinian refugee camp and Islamic militants holed up inside, breaking the two-day-old truce.
“The Lebanese government is, I think, very much trying to do the right thing here, to protect its population against the extremists who would sow discord and instability there,” Rice said. “And I think the world is speaking out in favor of the Lebanese government.”
Rice and Downer spoke privately about the Middle East and a range of other issues, aides said. Their public appearances in the Silicon Valley emphasized their mutual admiration for innovation in this cradle of technology.
Rice served as provost at Stanford University before joining the administration, and her visit here was the second U.S. tour with a foreign minister. In October 2005, she took British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on a trip through her native Birmingham, Ala.
Australia has been a strong supporter of the war in Iraq. The administration also values Australia’s advocacy of democracy in Indonesia and its help on other Pacific Rim issues – the reasons for the thank-you tour of California, according to Rice’s aides.
The two began the day at Stanford before moving on to Hewlett-Packard Co. (nyse: HPQ – news – people ), where Rice made plain she intends to return to academia, calling herself a “soon-to-be-future professor again.”
Rice and Downer also took speed-limit-shattering spins in a prototype of the Tesla Roadster, a Ferrari-fast, $92,000 sports car that runs on electricity. Tesla Motors Inc. senior sales manager Tom O’Leary and Rice sped down a road at NASA’s Moffett Field research park, hitting 110 mph.
“This thing can move!” Rice beamed after stepping out of the car. “We expect to see great things from Tesla.”
“It’s great to see the private sector coming up with initiatives like this,” Downer said of Tesla, which is backed primarily by local individual investors and venture capitalists.
President Bush has generally favored hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles and “flexible fuel” vehicles running on ethanol and biodiesel as potential alternatives for energy savings.
Rice and Downer also lunched with Silicon Valley CEOs and planned to visit an education program Rice and her late father helped establish 16 years ago, The Center for a New Generation.
Bush’s approval rating is lower in California than in national polls, and Rice was jeered and cheered, in equal measure, as she left a San Francisco Giants baseball game Wednesday night.
Her travels Thursday kept her largely inside a circle of old colleagues and political allies. Rice previously served on the Hewlett-Packard board of directors, and she was escorted inside the company’s campus here by HP Chief Executive Mark Hurd.
