most big companies long ago yielded to restructuring demands, the Continent still has plenty of tempting targets. Consumer giant Unilever, for instance, has been mooted as takeover bait because it is less streamlined than American rival Procter & Gamble Co (PG). (PG) and has resisted shareholder pressure to split the company. ABN Amro is in similar straits. Its stock has stagnated for seven years as it lagged rivals in cutting costs and focusing its business. Enter TCI (the "children" in the name refers to a charity run by founder Christopher Hohn's wife that gets a share of management fees). The press-shy Hohn issued a statement saying TCI was "encouraged" by news of ABN Amro's talks with Barclays, which produced a healthy 10% bounce in the Dutch bank's shareA senior State Department official Friday defended the decision by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to leave Uzbekistan off the itinerary of the Central Asian trip she begins next Monday. U.S.-Uzbek relations have deteriorated since violence last May in the Uzbek city of Andijan.

The two countries had developed close security ties after the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.

But the relationship soured amid the Uzbek government's resistance to an international inquiry into the Andijan events.

Daniel Fried, the State Department's top policy official for the region, says avoiding Tashkent on the Rice trip, the first by a secretary of state to the region in nearly four years, was an obvious decision - in his words, not a close call.

Mr. Fried, Assistant Secretary of State for European and