BOOK ON RICE REVEALS HER SKEPTICISM ON PALI LEADERS AND PEACE

Rice Thought Palestinian Leader Weak - Anne Gearan
Secretary of State Rice thought Mahmoud Abbas a weak disappointment, and she once judged President Bush's signature Mideast peace program unworkable, according to a new biography, The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy, by Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler. In 2005, Rice considered Abbas "a nice man but ineffective," and she worried Abbas was unworthy of the investment in trust and money the U.S. had placed in him, the book says. "The road map is at best a marginal plan. It doesn't work," the book quotes Rice as telling an Israeli counterpart. The book quotes Bush as calling Abbas predecessor, Yasser Arafat, "a loser" on whom Bush was unwilling to waste political capital. (Associated Press)