Gaddafi, the 'African Princess' and an eerie fascination...

New York: Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is out with her memoir No Higher Honor, which offers a lively review of her eight years in the Bush White House. In her book, due out next Tuesday, Rice writes about her encounters with a constellation of foreign leaders, including Manmohan Singh and kooky deceased Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Rice, 53, says in her memoir of over 750 pages that Sudan’s president Omar Hassan al-Bashir looked “as though he was on drugs” and that she felt like she needed a shower after shaking hands with Lebanese President Émile Lahoud.

In an advance excerpt of No Higher Honor  published in The Daily Beast , Rice writes that her first trip to Libya was preceded by Gaddafi asking visitors why his “African princess” wouldn’t visit him. Gaddafi, it turns out, was quite besotted with the intelligent and poised American diplomat and made a strange music video that had pictures of her.

“I withheld my visit until we could secure a Libyan claims settlement for families whose relatives had been killed in attacks such as the bombing by Libyan agents of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. My upcoming trip gave me powerful leverage in these negotiations because Qaddafi desperately wanted me to visit Tripoli,” Rice says in her memoir.

‘An eerie fascination’

She writes there were “two reasons for this: one traditional and the other, well, a little disconcerting. Obviously, the first visit by a US secretary of state since 1953 would be a major milestone on the country’s path to international acceptability. But Qaddafi also had a slightly eerie fascination with me personally, asking visitors why his ‘African princess’ wouldn’t visit him.”

Rice said she decided to “ignore the latter and dwell on the former to prepare for the trip.” The arrangements for the trip, however, were not easy, with all manner of Libyan demands, including that she meet Gaddafi in his tent. “Needless to say, I declined the invitation and met him in his formal residence,” writes Rice.

What ensued was a “really strange” meeting Rice had in 2008 with Gaddafi, who was killed last week in his hometown of Sirte.

“What was going through my head was ‘How long do I have to sit here and how quickly can I get out of here?’ You know, it was funny because when he said, ‘I have a video for you,’ I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, what is this going to be?’ But it was actually just a bunch of pictures of me with Vladimir Putin, me with Hu Jintao,” Rice tells ABC News in an interview to air next week.

“And then he said, ‘I have Libya’s best composer, most famous composer write this song for you,’ and it was called ‘Black Flower in the White House.’”

Rice labelled the meeting with Gaddafi as one of the strangest of her tenure. When Libyan rebels raided Gaddafi’s compound in August, they found a photo album filled with pictures of her ( photographs of the album here ). Huffington Post reported that Rice-struck Gaddafi, sent baubles worth $212,225 to her during her final months in office. A State Department report declared Gaddafi gave Rice a diamond ring and locket which had a picture of “prince charming” himself!

Nuclear  deal with India: the back story

Rice also gives readers an intimate account of how the US persuaded reluctant Singh to go for the landmark India-US civil nuclear energy deal. Much to Washington’s surprise, Singh didn’t leap at it as he was worried about selling the deal to coalition partners.

It’s almost as if Singh knew, even before it actually happened, that the Communist parties that supported his coalition in parliament would withdraw their backing if he activated the pact. In July 2008, Singh survived a key vote by persuading the Samajwadi Party, a former adversary, to back his government over the nuclear deal when the Communists backed out.

Singh ultimately championed the nuclear deal, but former external affairs minister Natwar Singh was far more enthusiastic at the start. The book describes the intense diplomacy that led to an agreement being hammered out. Hours before the joint statement made by Singh and Bush on 18 July 2005 on the framework for the agreement there was a stalemate.

“Natwar was adamant,” says Rice. “He wanted the deal. But the prime minister wasn’t sure he could sell it in New Delhi.”

“I called the President (Bush). ‘It isn’t going to work. Singh just can’t make it happen,’ I said.

‘Too bad,’ he answered and didn’t press further. Later that night Nick (Nicholas Burns, the then Under Secretary of State) called to tell me what I already knew – there wouldn’t be a deal,” writes Rice.

Next morning, Rice asked to see Singh, but he refused to see her. Natwar Singh told Rice, Singh didn’t want to see her because he didn’t want to say “No” to her.

“I wasn’t ready to surrender. ‘Ask him again,’ I pleaded.” Natwar Singh tried again. The PM finally agreed to see Rice.

Rice then persuaded Singh by saying; “Mr Prime Minister, this is the deal of a lifetime. You and President Bush are about to put US-India relations on a fundamentally new footing. I know it’s hard for you, but it’s hard for the president (Bush) too. I didn’t come here to negotiate language — only to ask you to tell your officials to get this done, and let’s get it done before you see the president.”

The US nuclear deal with India ultimately gave President Bush a rare foreign policy victory in his last weeks in office.