New York: A partnership between US President George W Bush and his National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice has helped shape an assertive American foreign policy, a media report said today (Jan 7, 2004).

Rice began her relationship with Bush as the foreign policy tutor who educated the little-travelled 2000 Presidential candidate in the complexities of the world. Now, three years, two wars and countless crises later, the relationship between the President and Rice has evolved into a partnership that has shaped one of the most assertive foreign policies in recent American history, the 'New York Times' said in an analytical front-page article.

Rice, a former Democrat-turned-ardent hawkish Republican, has no trouble making her views known to the President. It was Rice and Bush who decided last August at the President's ranch to bring the management of the administration's Iraq policy to the White House.

In short, the paper said Rice has become a germination point for Bush's foreign policy, from the war in Iraq to sidelining Yasser Arafat to the policy of pre-emption. Like a number of earlier relationships between National Security Advisers and their bosses, including Henry Kissinger's association with Richard Nixon and Zbigniew Brzezinski's work with Jimmy Carter, Rice's interactions with Bush have developed into a fulcrum for the development of foreign policy.