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10/21/2005:

"Rice takes Straw to her birthplace in the south"

The special relationship between Britain and the US went south yesterday, as Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, took the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, to visit her Alabama birthplace, to draw a parallel between America's civil rights struggle and its current ambitions to spread democracy abroad.

Ms Rice presented the trip as a new form of US diplomacy, bringing foreign counterparts to see America beyond the usual diplomatic circuit in Washington and New York. Mr Straw was the first to be invited. US and British officials rejected suggestions in the British press that the trip was aimed at burnishing Ms Rice's credentials as a future presidential candidate.
guardian.co.uk