When Pakistan PM's charm failed on Rice

Unfazed by the rich baritone and charm of Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stared him down and by the end of a meeting held two years back, he was babbling and shifting uncomfortably, according to a new biography of her.

When Rice sat down with Aziz during her visit to Pakistan in March, 2005, the Pakistan Premier, who fancied himself as a ladies man, puffed himself up and held forth in what he obviously was his seductive baritone.

"He bragged to Western diplomats, no less, that he could conquer any woman in two minutes," says the biography Twice as Good Condoleezza Rice and her path to power, according to Pakistani daily Dawn.

Aziz "tried this Saville Row-suited gigolo kind of charm: Pakistan is a country of rich traditions, staring in Rice's eyes," the biography's author and Newsweek magazine's senior editor Marcus Mabry, wrote.

"There was this test of wills where he was trying to use all his charm on her as a woman and she just basically stared him down. By the end of the meeting, he was babbling," the newspaper quoted the author as writing.

"The Pakistanis were shifting uncomfortably. And his (Aziz) voice visibly changed," the author wrote.

While reproducing the excerpts, Dawn said the reports about Aziz appeared "uncharitable" and the adjectives used "appear to be unprecedented in their harshness."

The meeting between Aziz and Rice happened during the US Secretary of State's first visit to Pakistan after taking over the high profile job from her predecessor, Collin Powell.

Rice's meetings with the Pakistani leadership focused over Islamabad's concerns over the emerging India-US relations as well as America's tough posture over the proliferation network of nuclear scientist A Q Khan, as well the Taliban and al Qaeda, it said.

The book also has references about how Rice dealt with Musharraf and how she went about her agenda that included serious items like "Pakistan's weak efforts to root out the Taliban and al Qaeda."

During her visit, she declined to confirm whether US would sell the F-16s, which Washington subsequently endorsed after Pakistan came around more effectively to rein in the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The author also mentioned that Rice had telephoned President Pervez Musharraf to explain that Washington was signing a new nuclear pact with India.

"The deal with Delhi, like Washington's limited moves to stop the killing in Darfur, was a profoundly realist accommodation to the world as it was (the reality of a nuclear India) rather than as it should be (the ideal of non-proliferation)," the author noted.