April may have been one of Rice's cruelest months

By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, April may have been one of the cruelest months.

There is little good news on U.S. foreign policy from Iraq and Afghanistan to North Korea and Russia.

On the domestic front, Rice has been subpoenaed to testify about erroneous intelligence used to justify the Iraq war, has fended off criticism from former CIA Director George Tenet and has watched one of her top aides resign amid a sex scandal.

Few analysts could cite recent diplomatic victories for the administration; all said challenges abound.

Violence rages in Iraq and the U.S.-backed government there has yet to forge the political compromises that many analysts believe are mandatory to end the strife.

In Afghanistan, U.S. and NATO forces face a revived Taliban insurgency more than five years after U.S.-led troops toppled the Taliban regime that harbored al Qaeda.

Analysts said the U.S. commitments in both countries, as well as the complexity of the problems they face and the heavy U.S. resources they demand, are constraining U.S. foreign policy elsewhere.

"Quite clearly the fact that we have most of our forces tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan is not lost on the rest of the world," said Daniel Serwer of the U.S. Institute for Peace think tank. "When Gulliver is tied down, everybody knows it."

"You've got some long-term trends, like the war in Iraq and the (Republican) loss of Congress, which are narrowing the options and the chickens are coming home to roost," said Rand Corporation analyst James Dobbins.

One area where the State Department claimed success just a few months ago was North Korea, following its February 13 agreement to take steps to give up its nuclear programs in exchange for the prospect of economic and other benefits.

However, Pyongyang missed one of the deal's first deadlines on April 14 by failing to shut down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon because of a financial dispute.

"WEAK HAND"

Last week alone, Rice suffered several setbacks.

On Wednesday, a congressional committee subpoenaed her to testify about the 2003 White House claim -- since discredited -- that Iraq sought to acquire uranium from Niger.

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans to freeze Moscow's commitments under a European arms control deal, a move that increased tensions.