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‘Early months were anything but easy.’ Livni
Photo: Dudi Vaaknin
Photo: AP
Osama bin Laden (archive photo)
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Livni on Time’s 100 most influential list

‘Tzipi’s strength to endure, indeed to excel, in what were difficult, often heartbreaking, conditions was a testament to her character,’ Condoleezza Rice writes in special column for magazine. Olmert, Bush omitted from list

WASHIGTON – Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is among the newsmakers on Time magazine's list of 100 people who shape the world.

 

Shockingly, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and US President George W. Bush are not included.

 

Other figures include Pope Benedict XVI, the commander of US forces in Iraq General David Petraeus, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama.

 

Queen Elizabeth II, Democratic speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Senator Hilary Clinton, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and German Chancellor Angela Merkel also appeared on the list.

 


Photo: AP

 

Livni is also among the 21 people defined by the magazine as “leaders and revolutionaries”, along with Saudi King Abdullah, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

 

Rice wrote a passage about Livni for the magazine’s special edition in which she said, “It was late summer in 1999, and I was in Israel. President Bush was still Governor Bush, and I was traveling as his foreign policy adviser. In a meeting with Ariel Sharon, I met one of his advisers—a confident and impressive woman, roughly my age (well, actually a little younger), named Tzipi Livni.

 

“Little did I know how intertwined our lives and work would become. Last May, Tzipi, like me, became the second woman ever to hold her nation's top foreign policy job. Those early months were anything but easy: violence in Gaza, a war in Lebanon, a radical President in Iran.

 

“Tzipi's strength to endure, indeed to excel, in what were difficult, often heartbreaking, conditions was a testament to her character. Tzipi and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have the foresight to know that a Palestinian state is in Israel's greatest interest, and that they must pursue the cause of peace with their Arab neighbors. President Bush and I deeply share this goal. And for Tzipi and me, it is now the focus of our work together,“ she wrote.

 


פרסום ראשון: 05.03.07, 22:04
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