PARIS, Feb 4 (AFP) - The United States' new secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, will meet French President Jacques Chirac next Tuesday as part of a tour preceding a European visit by US President George W. Bush later this month, officials in Paris said.
She will see Chirac at 7:00 pm (1800 GMT) Tuesday, the officials in the French leader's office said.
US officials said Rice would also be giving a speech on US-European relations late Tuesday but gave no details of its content nor its venue and timing.
Rice's spokesman, Richard Boucher, said in Washington on Monday that "she wanted to do it (the speech) in Paris because she felt Paris was one of the places where there's a lot of debate and discussion about the US, about Europe, about common goals, about how we achieve our agenda, and that she wanted to be part of that discussion."
Many European countries, led by France and Germany, clashed with the United States over the war on Iraq and relations between Paris and Washington remain frosty even though efforts have been made to paper over the differences.
Rice's tour started in London Friday, when she met British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
She was due to go to Berlin late Friday to hold talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. From there, she was to quickly visit Poland, Turkey, Israel, the West Bank and Italy before arriving in France next Tuesday.
After Paris, she is to complete the tour with trips to Belgium and Luxembourg.
Bush is due to start a trip to Europe on February 21 with a working dinner with Chirac in Brussels on the eve of an EU-NATO summit in the Belgian capital.
From there, the US president will go to Mainz, Germany to see Schroeder, then to Bratislava, Slovakia, where he will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.
02/04/2005 13:54 GMT - AFP