During her week-long sweep through Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Rice steered clear of confrontation over one of the region’s most volatile issues — the role of women in Islamic societies.

Her admission that there were “boundaries” to the US drive for democratic reform in the region — notably in Saudi Arabia, where she declined to take up the cause of women, who are barred from driving cars — spurred accusations of American hypocrisy.

Critics claimed it also reduced the effect of a hard- hitting speech in Cairo, where Rice urged Middle Eastern rulers to “abandon the excuses” they had advanced for avoiding the “hard work” of democracy.

She warned the leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia — both American allies — that Washington was no longer ready to “pursue stability at the expense of democracy”, as it had done for the past 60 years.

But chatting to reporters as she flew from Riyadh to Brussels, Rice was asked why she had “very pointedly” declined to take a public position on the issue of Saudi women.

“It’s just a line I’ve not wanted to cross,” she replied. “The United States has to recognise that even after democratic processes have taken place, places are not going to look like the United States . . . I think it’s important that we do have some boundaries about what we’re trying to achieve.”

Her response fuelled complaints by human rights activists such as Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian feminist who won the 2003 Nobel Peace prize. Earlier this year Ebadi accused the administration of “hypocrisy” in its attitude to unfriendly nations such as Iran.

“Given the longstanding willingness of the American government to overlook abuses of human rights, particularly women’s rights, by close allies in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia, it is hard not to see the Bush administration’s focus on human rights violations in Iran as a cloak for its larger strategic interests,” Ebadi said.

State department officials insisted that Rice had spoken out repeatedly about women’s rights around the world. “Women’s rights are not a ‘women’s issue’,” Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of state for global affairs, told a recent meeting of Arab businesswomen. “They are a fundamental building block for democracy, prosperity and stability.”

Others noted that while Rice made no mention of Saudi discrimination against women in her discussions in Riyadh, she had pressed Saudi officials on the fate of three dissidents who were jailed for presenting officials with a petition calling for a new constitution. In the past Washington has been criticised for ignoring the treatment of opponents to the royal family.

“Condi doesn’t see herself as someone who is supposed to carry the torch for women’s rights,” said one of her associates. “She knows that the absence of women’s rights is a major component of backwardness in the Arab world,” the associate added. “But just because she’s a female I don’t think she sees herself pushing disproportionately this part of the democratisation agenda.”

Rice pressed the case for greater democracy in Egypt by meeting Ayman Nour, a more moderate dissident figure who intends to challenge President Hosni Mubarak in elections called for September.

Nour goes on trial this week on charges of forging the signatures he needed to register a political party. Most outsiders view the trial as a politically calculated effort to eliminate a potential rival to Mubarak. Despite Rice’s intervention, the Egyptian authorities last week barred Nour from leaving the country to address the European parliament.

“The main dilemma that US policy faces is what to do if the democratic process brings to the fore parties taking anti-western, anti-US and anti-Israeli positions,” Rice’s associate said. US officials are already in a quandary over how to deal with the potential emergence as mainstream political parties of militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.

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