MISSING EMBASSY

Al Kamen, Washington Post - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton kicks off her worldwide "I'm Ba-aack" tour today, starting with what's being billed as a "major policy address" at the Council on Foreign Relations here. She's then off tomorrow on a week-long trip to India and Thailand.

This will give her a chance to, um, reset her image following a month on the sidelines after breaking her elbow and then some embarrassment this week over a comment she made in May: "The Iranians are building a huge embassy in Managua. And you can only imagine what that's for."

Turns out, as this paper reported Monday, that no one in Nicaragua has been able to find any super-embassy, and they've been looking hard. "We don't have an Iranian mega-embassy," a Nicaraguan official told The Post. "We have an ambassador in a rented house with his wife."

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly was obliged to tell reporters Monday that "right now, there is no major Iranian presence in Nicaragua." That jibed with the view of one U.S. diplomat in Nicaragua, who told The Post, "There is no huge Iranian Embassy being built, as far as we can tell."