SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - It has become a recurring theme of Hillary Rodham Clinton's early travels as the chief diplomat of the United States: she says that American policy on a given issue has failed, and her foreign listeners fall all over themselves in gratitude.

On Friday, Mrs. Clinton said here that the uncompromising policy of the Bush administration toward Cuba had not worked. That, she said, is why President Obama decided earlier this week to lift restrictions on travel and financial transfers for United States residents with relatives in Cuba.

"We are continuing to look for productive ways forward, because we view the present policy as having failed," Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference in this sun-dappled capital, hours before flying to join Mr. Obama at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.

The contrition tour goes beyond Latin America. In China, Mrs. Clinton told audiences that the United States must accept its responsibility as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. In Indonesia, she said the American-backed policy of sanctions against Myanmar had not been effective. And in the Middle East, she pointed out that ostracizing the Iranian government had not persuaded it to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions.

Like other leaders around the world, Mrs. Clinton's host, the president of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez, responded effusively on Friday, hailing the secretary and her boss, Mr. Obama, for their view on Cuban policy, which he said took "great courage" and could utterly transform the political landscape of Latin America.

"President Obama is paving a new road," he said. "It is recognition of the fact that previous policies have failed. Fifty years of a policy that has not generated the originally sought purposes can be called a failure."

In fact, Mrs. Clinton's aides clarified, she was not condemning the half-century-old trade embargo against Cuba, which the Obama administration has not yet agreed to lift. Rather, her reference was to the strict travel and financial restrictions imposed by the Bush administration.

But it hardly seemed to matter. For a senior American official - someone who almost became president - to declare that the United States had erred, makes a major impact on foreign audiences.

Mrs. Clinton drew a similarly gratified response when she said in Mexico recently that the huge American appetite for drugs was fueling the booming narcotics trade in that country and elsewhere in the region.

She repeated that message in the Dominican Republic on Friday, telling a questioner at a town hall meeting here, "We acknowledge we have a responsibility, and we have to act in concert with you."

Regret is a new role for Mrs. Clinton, but one that she has had plenty of opportunity to observe up close. On a single trip to Africa in 1998 her husband, former President Bill Clinton, apologized for American participation in slavery; American support of brutal African dictators; American "neglect and ignorance" of Africa; American failure to intervene sooner in the Rwandan genocide of 1994; American "complicity" in apartheid; and even for a failure that occurred far from Africa - America's slow response to the bloodshed in Bosnia.

In most cases, Mrs. Clinton has been simply disavowing a policy of the Bush White House - something she did with zeal as a Democratic candidate. But the words carry much more weight overseas. And there is some evidence that these gestures are starting to register.

On Friday, Cuba's president, Raul Castro, welcomed the administration's easing of travel restrictions, saying he was open to dialogue with the United States on a full range of topics, including human rights and the release of political prisoners - something Mrs. Clinton had demanded a day earlier.

"We have seen Raul Castro's comments and we welcome this overture," she said. "We are taking a very serious look at it, and we will consider how we intend to respond."

Last week, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, softened his tone against the United States, suggesting that Iran would make a new offer to the West on its nuclear program.

There are holdouts, of course: North Korea has greeted the Obama administration by testing a missile, ratcheting up its language and threatening to pull out of multiparty talks on its nuclear program. Mrs. Clinton, in turn, has had few warm words for North Korea's reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il.

But in many countries, her statements have elicited an almost palpable sense of relief. And she suggested that the Obama administration's drive for warmer relations with old foes was just getting started.

Asked whether the United States would build bridges to hostile Latin American leaders, like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Mrs. Clinton said, "Let's put ideology aside; that is so yesterday."





By Mark Landler, The New York Times, April 17, 2009

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago - President Obama, seeking to thaw long-frozen relations with Cuba, told a gathering of Western Hemisphere leaders on Friday that "the United States seeks a new beginning with Cuba," and that he was willing to have his administration engage the Castro government on a wide array of issues.

Mr. Obama's remarks, during the opening ceremony at the Summit of the Americas, are the clearest signal in decades that the United States is willing to change direction in its dealings with Cuba. They capped a dizzying series of developments this week, including surprisingly warm words between Raul Castro, Cuba's leader, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Other leaders here said that in watching Mr. Obama extend his hand to Cuba, they felt they were witnessing a historic shift. And in another twist, Cuba's strongest ally at the summit, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, no fan of the United States, was photographed at the meeting giving Mr. Obama a hearty handclasp and a broad smile.

Cuba is not on the official agenda here; indeed, Cuba, which has been barred from the Organization of American States since 1962, is not even on the guest list. But leaders in the hemisphere have spent months planning to make Cuba an issue here.

The White House was well aware that if Mr. Obama did not address it head on, the issue would overwhelm the rest of the summit gathering. This week, the president opened the door to the discussions by abandoning longstanding restrictions on the ability of Cuban-Americans to travel freely to the island and send money to relatives there.

"I know there is a longer journey that must be traveled in overcoming decades of mistrust, but there are critical steps we can take toward a new day," Mr. Obama said, adding that he was "prepared to have my administration engage with the Cuban government on a wide range of issues - from human rights, free speech, and democratic reform to drugs, migration, and economic issues."

Mr. Obama's message was not entirely new; he has said in the past that he was willing to engage with Cuba. But making a public pledge before leaders of 33 other nations, many of whom he had not yet met, gave his words added heft.

He came here with the aim of reaching out to leaders in a region that felt ignored by the United States during the Bush years. Just as he campaigned on the theme of change when running for the White House, he made change a theme of his speech here, saying: "I didn't come here to debate the past. I came here to deal with the future."

On Cuba, the president's words were as notable for what he said as for what he did not say. He did not scold or berate the Cuban government for holding political prisoners, as his predecessor, George W. Bush, often did.

But he also did not say that he was willing to support Cuba's membership in the Organization of American States, or lifting the 47-year-old trade embargo against Cuba, as some hemisphere leaders here want him to do.

"Let me be clear," Mr. Obama said. "I am not interested in talking for the sake of talking. But I do believe we can move U.S.-Cuban relations in a new direction."

Those sentiments drew warm praise from leaders like President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina and President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. Mr. Ortega, who said he felt ashamed that he was participating in the summit meeting without the presence of Cuba, evoked images of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, saying, "I am convinced that wall will collapse, will come down."

Ms. Kirchner praised Mr. Obama for "what you did to stabilize the relationship from the absurd restrictions imposed by the Bush administration," adding: "We sincerely believe that we in the Americas have a second opportunity to construct a new relationship. Don't let it slip away."

Mr. Obama's speech on Friday night was only the latest in a string of overtures between the countries. On Thursday, Raul Castro, Cuba's president, used unusually conciliatory language in describing the Obama administration's decision to lift restrictions on family travel and remittances.

"We are willing to discuss everything, human rights, freedom of press, political prisoners, everything, everything, everything they want to talk about, but as equals, without the smallest shadow cast on our sovereignty, and without the slightest violation of the Cuban people's right to self-determination," Mr. Castro said in Venezuela during a meeting of leftist governments meant as a counterpoint to this weekend's summit meeting in Trinidad and Tobago.

On Friday, Mrs. Clinton responded, saying, "We welcome his comments, the overture that they represent, and we're taking a very serious look at how we intend to respond."

Earlier this week Brazilian officials signaled in Rio de Janeiro that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, potentially flanked by the Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe, would raise the issue of accepting Cuba into the Organization of American States at the summit meeting. Cuba's "absence is an anomaly and he is waiting for this situation to be corrected," Marco Aurelio Garcia, Mr. da Silva's foreign policy adviser, told reporters.

On Friday, the secretary general of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, said he would call for Cuba to be readmitted to the group. And Mr. Chavez recently said he would refuse to sign the official declaration produced at the summit meeting because Cuba was not invited.

There are no plans for Mr. Chavez and Mr. Obama to meet privately, but White House officials said in advance of the meeting that the two would participate in at least one small group leaders' meeting, and that Mr. Obama would not spurn any outreach by Mr. Chavez, who frequently referred to Mr. Bush as "the devil."

In a sign of how times have changed, the Venezuelan government issued a statement recounting Mr. Chavez's words to Mr. Obama as they shook hands here: "I greeted Bush with this hand eight years ago. I want to be your friend."

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Alexei Barrionuevo, The New York Times, April 17, 2009

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) - The U.S. and its allies battled Somalia's pirates on two fronts Wednesday, with French forces seizing a bandit mother ship and Washington seeking to keep the marauders from their spoils. Another U.S. freighter headed to port with armed sailors aboard after pirates damaged it with gunshots and grenades.

One pirate issued a new threat to "slaughter" Americans, and Tuesday's assault on a second U.S. cargo ship, the Liberty Sun, underscored the outlaws' ability to act with impunity despite international naval operations against them and mounting concern worldwide over how to end the escalating attacks off the Horn of Africa.

Pirates bombarded the U.S.-flagged Liberty Sun with automatic weapons fire and rocket-propelled grenades, but its American crew of about 20 successfully blockaded themselves in the engine room and warded off the attack with evasive maneuvers.

The ship, carrying food aid for hungry Africans - including Somalis - was damaged "pretty badly" on its bridge, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record about the ship.

Windows were blown out and the crew had to put out a small fire, the official said, but they were still able to navigate. By the time the USS Bainbridge arrived five hours later, the pirates were gone.

Meanwhile, French naval forces launched an early-morning attack on a suspected pirate "mother ship" 550 miles east of Mombasa and seized 11 men, thwarting an attack on the Liberian cargo ship Safmarine Asia, the French Defense Ministry said. No one was injured.

The ministry said the vessel was a larger ship that pirates use to allow their tiny skiffs to operate hundreds of miles off the coast.

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Christophe Prazuck said a French helicopter in the area heard a distress call from the Safmarine Asia. He described the seized ship as a small, noncommercial vessel carrying fuel, water and food supplies.

The 11 pirates, believed to be Somalis, were being held on the Nivose, a French frigate among the international fleet trying to protect shipping in the Gulf of Aden.

France has been proactive against pirates for at least the past year, intervening to save three of its ships and spearheading a Europe-wide anti-piracy force called Atalanta. French politicians have sought to have other European countries take greater action against pirates.

Three Somali pirates in the French city of Rennes faced judicial investigation after being captured in a hostage rescue Friday. Several other pirates also have been in French custody since last year.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced new diplomatic efforts to freeze the pirates' assets and said the Obama administration will work with shippers and insurers to improve their defenses against pirates, part of a diplomatic initiative to thwart attacks on shipping.

"These pirates are criminals, they are armed gangs on the sea. And those plotting attacks must be stopped," Clinton said at the State Department.

Clinton did not call for military force, although she mentioned "going after" pirate bases in Somalia, as authorized by the U.N. several months ago.

She said it may be possible to stop boat-building companies from doing business with the pirates.

The measures outlined by Clinton are largely stopgap moves while the administration weighs more comprehensive diplomatic and military action.

She acknowledged it will be hard to find the pirates' assets. But she wants the U.S. and others to "explore ways to track and freeze" pirate ransom money and other funds used in purchases of new boats, weapons and communications equipment.

"We have noticed that the pirates are buying more and more sophisticated equipment, they're buying faster and more capable vessels, they are clearly using their ransom money for their benefit — both personally and on behalf of their piracy," she said. "We think we can begin to try and track and prevent that from happening."

Clinton said the administration will also call for immediate meetings of an international counterpiracy task force to expand naval coordination.

The U.S. plans to send an envoy to an April 23 conference on piracy in Brussels. The U.S. will also organize meetings with officials from Somalia's largely powerless transitional national government as well as regional leaders in its semiautonomous Puntland region to encourage them to do more to combat piracy.

Maritime experts say military force alone cannot solve the problem because the pirates operate in an area so vast as to render the flotilla of international warships largely ineffective. And with ships legally unable to carry arms in many ports, the world has struggled to end the scourge.

The Gulf of Aden, which links the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, is the shortest route from Asia to Europe. More than 20,000 ships cross the vital sea lane every year. It is becoming more dangerous by the day.

In 2003, there were only 21 attacks in these waters. In less than four months this year, there have been 79 attacks, compared with 111 for all of 2008, according to the International Maritime Bureau.

Somali pirates are holding more than 280 foreign crewmen on 15 ships - at least 76 of those sailors captured in recent days.

On Wednesday, pirates released the Greek-owned cargo ship Titan and Greek authorities said all 24 crewmen were in good health. The ship was hijacked March 19.

The assault on the Liberty Sun delayed a reunion between freed American sea captain Richard Phillips and the 19 crewmen of the Maersk Alabama he helped save in an attempted hijacking last week. Phillips had planned to meet his crew in Mombasa and fly home with them Wednesday, but he was stuck on the Bainbridge when it was diverted to help the Liberty Sun.

The Liberty Sun arrived safely in Mombasa Wednesday night accompanied by a U.S. Navy vessel, according to the cargo ship's operator, New York-based Liberty Maritime Corp.

The company did not name the the naval vessel, but it was likely the Bainbridge. A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press about the matter said earlier that the Bainbridge was traveling with the Liberty Sun to port.

The Alabama's crew left without Phillips Wednesday, heading to Andrews Air Force Base, Md., on a chartered plane.

"We are very happy to be going home," crewman William Rios of New York City said. But "we are disappointed to not be reuniting with the captain in Mombasa. He is a very brave man."

A pirate whose gang attacked the Liberty Sun claimed his group was targeting American ships and sailors.

"We will seek out the Americans, and if we capture them, we will slaughter them," said a 25-year-old pirate based in the Somali port of Harardhere who gave only his first name, Ismail.

"We will target their ships because we know their flags. Last night, an American-flagged ship escaped us by a whisker. We have showered them with rocket-propelled grenades," said Ismail, who did not take part in the Liberty Sun attack.

By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY and TODD PITMAN, The Associated Press, April 16, 2009

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As U.S. nuclear experts prepared to leave North Korea, the United States vowed consequences on Pyongyang for kicking them out, along with U.N. nuclear inspectors. This is after the United Nations condemned North Korea's recent missile launch.

Four U.S. experts monitoring North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear plant were preparing to depart the country in the next several days after North Korea ordered them to leave, State Department acting spokesman Robert Wood said. A small team of experts has been rotating into the facility since November 2007.

Wood said the U.S. has talked with Pyongyang about the expulsion and insisted the North Koreans would face consequences for "kicking these personnel out."

"We'll have to see what those consequences are," he said. "We are going to continue to work with our partners, both on the Security Council and outside of the Security Council, to bring consequences upon the North for the actions that it's taken."

He noted the United States proposed additional sanctions targeted at North Korea's nuclear program at a U.N. sanctions committee meeting on Wednesday.

The committee, Wood said, is determined to prevent the flow of goods that could be used to support North Korea's nuclear program, as well as entities supplying the North with nuclear technology.

Wood said the committee would have further discussions on the the list of goods and entities to be sanctioned. Under a presidential statement statement passed by the U.N. Security Council on Monday, the council would take up the sanction issue if the committee could not come to agreement by April 24.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said its inspectors left North Korea on Thursday after being ordered out by the reclusive nation.

"IAEA inspectors at the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Yongbyong nuclear facilities, on 15 April, removed all IAEA seals and switched off surveillance cameras," a statement from the agency said. "This follows the DPRK informing the inspectors, on 14 April, that it had decided to cease all cooperation with the IAEA, requested removal of containment and surveillance equipment, and required the inspectors to leave the DPRK at the earliest possible time."

North Korea has said that it will reactivate all of its nuclear facilities and go ahead with reprocessing spent fuel. On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Pyongyang's move "an unnecessary response to the legitimate statement put out of concern by the (U.N.) Security Council."

"Obviously, we hope there will be an opportunity to discuss this, not only with our partners and allies, but also, eventually, with the North Koreans," she said.

In addition to ordering the nuclear watchdog out of North Korea, Pyongyang has left six-party talks focusing on its nuclear program and has vowed to bolster its nuclear self-defense capabilities.

In a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, the North Korean Foreign Ministry called the U.N. condemnation of the nation's April 5 rocket launch a gross infringement on North Korea's sovereignty.

The Security Council on Monday adopted a declaration condemning North Korea for launching the rocket. The 15-member council voted unanimously for a statement by the president of the Security Council that also demands that North Korea make no more launches.

The North Korean government insisted the act was a peaceful launch of a satellite into orbit, but U.S. officials declared it a "provocative act" in violation of a 2006 Security Council resolution prohibiting Pyongyang from conducting ballistic missile launches.

China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States have been involved in the six-party talks with North Korea.




From Elise Labott, CNN, April 16, 2009

The Obama administration yesterday called for expanding the international counterpiracy effort to deter Somali pirates, secure the release of hostage ships and crews, and freeze pirate assets, yet U.S. military officials said there are no immediate plans to devote more warships to the region.

"These pirates are criminals, they are armed gangs on the sea. And those plotting attacks must be stopped," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in announcing a four-point plan that includes assisting Somalis in "cracking down on pirate bases and decreasing incentives for young Somali men to engage in piracy."

Somali pirates yesterday attempted to commandeer another U.S. cargo ship, the Liberty Sun, which had a crew of about 20 and was loaded with food aid. But the attack was thwarted, and the ship headed toward the Kenyan port of Mombasa with armed U.S. Navy guards aboard, Navy officials said.

The pirate attack occurred about 285 nautical miles southeast of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, the officials said. The pirates fired grenades and automatic weapons at the freighter, which sustained some damage, according to its operator, Liberty Maritime Corp. The pirates had departed by the time the guided-missile destroyer USS Bainbridge arrived.

It was not immediately clear whether the Liberty Sun was a target of opportunity for pirates or whether they were retaliating against a U.S.-flagged ship for the killings by U.S. Navy snipers this week of three pirates during an operation to rescue the Maersk Alabama's captain, Richard Phillips.

Nevertheless, the incident underscored how difficult it is for the handful of naval ships patrolling the vast expanse of water to prevent pirate strikes, which happen on average every three days, military officials said.

Currently, there are five U.S. and non-U.S. naval ships operating on counterpiracy missions in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean region, according to a military official from U.S. Central Command. With roughly 500 miles of Somali coastline on the gulf and 1,000 on the Indian Ocean, there is a total of about 400,000 square miles of ocean to patrol against piracy, the officials said.

"It's a big space, and it wants for sustained surveillance. . . . It's hard to find these relatively small boats," such as the pirate skiffs, said retired Vice Adm. Kevin J. Cosgriff, who commanded the 5th Fleet and U.S. naval forces in the Middle East until last year.

Military options for bolstering the effort include "flooding the zone" with more ships and aircraft, a daunting task given the need for constant patrolling over such a large area, Cosgriff said.

A second option, he said, would be to "go ashore light," meaning that military personnel would try to disrupt piracy by denying pirates boats, fuel and other resources. "It would be a military operation but simply to get stuff, not to arrest people," he said.

A far more aggressive approach, which he called "go ashore big," would involve military personnel moving into Somali villages and targeting the pirate leadership. "That is a big step" with serious risks, he said.

Nonmilitary options include encouraging commercial ships to stay farther offshore, learn evasive anti-piracy maneuvers or carry armed guards, although Cosgriff said shipping companies have hesitated to do the last because of potential problems with unions, insurers and some ports.

The region off the Horn of Africa poses the world's most serious piracy problem today, with 122 attacks last year, 80 of which were successful in that pirates took control of the ships. About 33,000 ships transited the Gulf of Aden last year, according to Pentagon data. Dozens of pirate attacks have occurred off the east coast of Somalia since March, according to the International Maritime Bureau.

Somalia's piracy problem is especially grave because the country lacks a strong government and security forces to tackle it -- in contrast to countries in Southeast Asia, where the Pentagon helped combat piracy in the Strait of Malacca in recent years.

"There was a huge piracy problem around the Strait of Malacca," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday in a speech to officers at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala.

The Pentagon pushed training teams and new equipment to aid the navies of Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. "The problem in Somalia is that we don't have governments like we had in Southeast Asia," Gates said.

This week, Clinton said, the State Department will dispatch an envoy to an international Somali peacekeeping meeting in Brussels aimed at helping Somalia police its own territory. "We will press these leaders to take action against pirates operating from bases within their territories," Clinton said.

An international contact group on piracy will also hold meetings to improve coordination of naval patrols in the region and explore freezing pirate assets. A State Department team will press Somali government officials to act against pirates on land and will work with the shipping industry to address self-defense measures.

In a separate incident yesterday, French naval forces captured 11 pirates in the Indian Ocean after foiling their attempt to hijack a Liberian-flagged cargo ship, the French Defense Ministry announced. The Liberty Sun attack slowed the return home of Phillips, who was on board the Bainbridge when it was diverted. White House officials said several of the families of the Maersk Alabama crew members were given a tour of the White House yesterday.

By Ann Scott Tyson and Stephanie McCrummen, The Washington Post, April 16, 2009

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reached an important milestone Wednesday in her quest to pay the debt from her failed 2008 presidential bid: For the first time in eight months, her campaign committee reported having more money in the bank than it owes.

On a day most Americans were preoccupied with filing their federal income taxes, Clinton's campaign committee filed finance documents with the Federal Election Commission, reporting a total of $2.3 million in debts at the end of March, compared with $2.6 million in the bank.

The nation's top diplomat has been steadily chipping away at unpaid campaign bills since suspending her White House bid in June 2008, when her debt peaked at $25.2 million. That amount covered $12 million owed to vendors, as well as the $13.2 million she loaned her campaign from personal funds.

Clinton's campaign was unable to repay that personal loan by the time the Democratic National Convention convened in Denver, Colorado, last August, the deadline mandated by the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. The former New York senator was forced to forgive the entire loan amount.

Her campaign owed $6.4 million to 16 creditors at the end of November; $5.9 million to five creditors at the end of December; and the current $2.3 million owed to just one creditor at the end of March. That creditor is Penn, Schoen & Berland, a political consulting and polling firm that advised Clinton during her presidential bid. The firm's president, Mark Penn, was Clinton's senior campaign strategist until he stepped down last April amid revelations that he had lobbied on behalf of Colombia for a U.S.-Colombia trade deal that Clinton opposed. Penn remained involved with the campaign.

Earlier this year, Clinton and her supporters raced to pay as much of the debt as possible by the time she was confirmed and sworn in as the nation's 67th secretary of state on January 21. As of that date, Clinton became subject to a federal law known as the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from personally soliciting or accepting political contributions. The Hatch Act allows others to keep raising money on Clinton's behalf, without her direct involvement.

This week, longtime Clinton ally James Carville, a CNN contributor, sent a fundraising e-mail to Democrats on behalf of Clinton's campaign, requesting contributions of as little as $5 in exchange for a chance to win one of several prizes, including spending a day with former President Bill Clinton.

"I won't spend a lot of time trying to convince you to help Hillary," Carville e-mailed. "I know what she means to you, and I'm sure you know how important it is for her to have her campaign pay off all its obligations."

It's unclear whether the campaign will use the $2.6 million in the bank to clear its $2.3 million in debts in the short term. Continued fundraising indicates that it will not. Additional operating expenses and other outlays could emerge.

Any extra money from the campaign could be donated to political causes or returned to donors.

Clinton's campaign reported raising $938,000 in contributions in the first three months of 2009.

In addition to tapping traditional fundraising, the campaign also generated money by selling or renting various campaign assets to other organizations. It received $2.6 million from Clinton's "Friends of Hillary" U.S. Senate campaign committee for the sale of unspecified assets and an additional $2.2 million from renting out its lists of campaign supporters.

Organizations that have rented Clinton's lists include the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the inaugural committee of then-President-elect Barack Obama, and the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation. Those organizations each paid $274,297. Clinton's political action committee, HillPAC, rented the lists for $822,492.

Among the Democratic candidates who have rented Clinton's campaign lists are Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln; Virginia gubernatorial candidate and former Clinton campaign Chairman Terry McAuliffe; New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who was appointed to fill Clinton's seat; and New York congressional candidate Scott Murphy, who hopes to succeed Gillibrand in the U.S. House.




By Robert Yoon, CNN, April 16, 2009

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton assured Haitians Thursday that the United States' latest aid is more than a short-term fix for a nation still struggling with some of the world's worst poverty.

Clinton told reporters that she and President Barack Obama aim to help create jobs and ensure stability in a country that has had little of either in recent years.

But the U.S. commitment to Haiti goes beyond what emerged at the donors' conference, Secretary Clinton said at a joint news conference with Haitian President Rene Preval.

"When we start to build roads, we must finish the roads. When we start to help farmers once again make their land rich and cultivatable, we want to be sure they harvest their crops," she said.

Preval said Haiti appreciates foreign assistance, which makes up about 60 percent of the government's budget, but that his country must become self-reliant.

"This percentage must be gradually decreased as Haiti becomes more able to supplement its own income," Preval said. "We must also encourage private investment."

Clinton also said the U.S. is considering requests to temporarily halt deportations of an estimated 30,000 Haitians from the United States. Haiti fears deportations would cost it much-needed remittances and force it to absorb even more people into its broken economy.

The U.S. often grants Temporary Protected Status to block deportations to countries that have suffered natural disasters or conflicts. The status currently applies to immigrants from Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Burundi, Somalia and Sudan.

"We are going to be considering how to help the people who are here continue to have those resources," Clinton said. "But at the same time, we don't want to encourage other Haitians to make the dangerous journey across the water."

Clinton stopped in Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic en route to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. She toured a health clinic run by the crew of the U.S. Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort, where some 13,000 Haitians have been treated so far during its 10-day visit.

She also visited a clothing factory that could benefit from a U.S. trade deal that may spur Haiti's dormant textile industry. The factory, which produces clothing for Levi's, Izod, Wal-Mart and others, is owned by the Apaid family, whose members helped lead opposition to former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Clinton said the factory's 500 workers make at least double Haiti's minimum wage.

Later on Thursday, she arrived in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo, where she and President Leonel Fernandez will discuss efforts to curb corruption and drug trafficking in the Caribbean.

Clinton's visit to Haiti is the first by a U.S. Secretary of State since Condoleezza Rice in 2005. It comes at another crucial time for the country, which has not recovered from last year's food riots or four tropical storms that killed nearly 800 people and caused $1 billion in damage.

Political tensions also are running high ahead of Sunday's long-delayed Senate elections: Some supporters of candidates that have been disqualified from running, including those of Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party, have threatened to disrupt the balloting. Several Lavalas supporters protested at Parliament on Thursday to demand they be allowed to participate.




By JONATHAN M. KATZ, The Associated Press, April 16, 2009

The Obama administration is waiting for Cuba to make political changes in response to its lifting of curbs on travel and remittances to the communist island, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today in Haiti.

"We stand ready to discuss with Cuba additional steps that could be taken," the secretary said, adding, "But we do expect Cuba to reciprocate." Clinton was speaking in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, at a press conference during which Haitian President Rene Preval said he hoped the U.S. would lift the Cuba trade embargo.

President Barack Obama told CNN's Spanish-language channel before going to Mexico today that Cuba needs to make progress in political rights and allow freer travel for Cubans. Obama had promised during his election campaign to abolish restrictions on family travel to Cuba and money transfers that were toughened by former President George W. Bush

"We would like to see Cuba open up its society, release political prisoners, open up to outside opinions and media, have the kind of society that we all know that would improve the opportunities for the Cuban people and for their nation," Clinton said.

The Obama administration on April 13 lifted limits on travel for Cuban-Americans to visit family members on the island and send them money. U.S. telecommunications companies such as AT&T Inc. will also be permitted to apply for licenses in Cuba, easing the commercial embargo against the country.

Americas Summit

Obama ordered the policy changes as he prepared to meet with Latin American leaders at a hemispheric summit this week. He took the actions amid pressure from some U.S. lawmakers, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, to do more to normalize commercial trade and diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro said his country doesn't represent a threat to U.S. security and is open to talks with its neighbor.

"We don't fear dialogue, nor do we need to invent enemies, and we don't fear debating ideas," Castro said today in a "reflection" sent via e-mail. "We believe in our convictions and with them we have defended and will continue to defend our homeland."

Cuba has never allowed a terrorist act against the U.S. to be launched from its shores, and it is a model in the fight against drug trafficking, Castro said.

Trade Embargo

The U.S. has maintained a trade embargo against Cuba since 1962, when Castro expropriated the land of U.S. citizens and companies. Cuban leaders blame the embargo for the Caribbean nation's economic and social problems.

Clinton was in Haiti to express U.S. support for its economic development plan, which includes efforts to create jobs and ease international debt. The impoverished country received new pledges of $324 million in aid from governments and organizations at a conference in Washington this week.

The Obama administration is reviewing the U.S. policy of deporting undocumented Haitians, Clinton said, adding that she is aware of the "substantial" financial help Haitians get from relatives in the U.S.

"We are looking carefully at the policy which we inherited," Clinton said, referring to the U.S. Coast Guard's orders to intercept Haitians trying to reach south Florida by boat, and the government's policy to deport Haitians found to be in the U.S. illegally.

"At the same time we don't want to encourage other Haitians to make the dangerous journey across the water," Clinton said.

By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Bloomberg, April 16, 2009

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton assured Haitians Thursday that the United States' latest aid is more than a short-term fix for a nation still struggling with some of the world's worst poverty.

Clinton told reporters that she and President Barack Obama aim to help create jobs and ensure stability in a country that has had little of either in recent years.

"The president and I had an excellent conversation reiterating what is his great hope: that he will see progress begun and finished to give the future back to the people of Haiti," she said after her gleaming motorcade passed through the capital's pothole-strewn roads.

The U.S., Haiti's largest benefactor, pledged $50 million in new aid at a donors' conference Tuesday in Washington, bringing the American total for the year to $302 million.

In all, the conference raised $324 million, although U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former President Bill Clinton and others have said that $600 million more is needed for economic development and hurricane recovery.

But the U.S. commitment to Haiti goes beyond what emerged at the donors' conference, Secretary Clinton said at a joint news conference with Haitian President Rene Preval.

"When we start to build roads, we must finish the roads. When we start to help farmers once again make their land rich and cultivatable, we want to be sure they harvest their crops," she said.

Preval said Haiti appreciates foreign assistance, which makes up about 60 percent of the government's budget, but that his country must become self-reliant.

"This percentage must be gradually decreased as Haiti becomes more able to supplement its own income," Preval said. "We must also encourage private investment."

Clinton also said the U.S. is considering requests to temporarily halt deportations of an estimated 30,000 Haitians from the United States. Haiti fears deportations would cost it much-needed remittances and force it to absorb even more people into its broken economy.

The U.S. often grants Temporary Protected Status to block deportations to countries that have suffered natural disasters or conflicts. The status currently applies to immigrants from Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Burundi, Somalia and Sudan.

"We are going to be considering how to help the people who are here continue to have those resources," Clinton said. "But at the same time, we don't want to encourage other Haitians to make the dangerous journey across the water."

Clinton stopped in Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic en route to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. She toured a health clinic run by the crew of the U.S. Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort, where some 13,000 Haitians have been treated so far during its 10-day visit.

She also visited a clothing factory that could benefit from a U.S. trade deal that may spur Haiti's dormant textile industry. The factory, which produces clothing for Levi's, Izod, Wal-Mart and others, is owned by the Apaid family, whose members helped lead opposition to former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Clinton said the factory's 500 workers make at least double Haiti's minimum wage.

Later on Thursday, she arrived in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo, where she and President Leonel Fernandez will discuss efforts to curb corruption and drug trafficking in the Caribbean.

Clinton's visit to Haiti is the first by a U.S. Secretary of State since Condoleezza Rice in 2005. It comes at another crucial time for the country, which has not recovered from last year's food riots or four tropical storms that killed nearly 800 people and caused $1 billion in damage.

Political tensions also are running high ahead of Sunday's long-delayed Senate elections: Some supporters of candidates that have been disqualified from running, including those of Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party, have threatened to disrupt the balloting. Several Lavalas supporters protested at Parliament on Thursday to demand they be allowed to participate.

By JONATHAN M. KATZ, The Associated Press, April 16, 2009

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged Tuesday more than 50 million dollars in US aid for poverty-wracked Haiti, as it struggles to recover from last year's devastating hurricanes.

Clinton, preparing to visit Haiti on Thursday, said the United States was setting aside 20 million dollars for roads and infrastructure, 20 million dollars to ease its debt load and another 15 million dollars in food aid.

She also pledged two million dollars for counter-narcotics efforts under the Merida Initiative, a program launched last year to fight drug trafficking in the Caribbean, Mexico and neighboring countries.

Speaking at an international donors conference in Washington organized by Haiti and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), she outlined efforts to help the Haitian government with its recovery, after the country was flattened by four massive storms in the space of a just a few weeks last year.

"Even the most responsible government in the world cannot prevent a natural disaster," Clinton said.

"The hurricanes didn't just wash away crops and houses, they washed away months of government planning," the chief US diplomat said, adding Haiti faced a 50-million dollar budget deficit that could undermine its plans.

"We will provide 20 million to help Haiti's debt service obligations and to free up other resources," Clinton said.

She invited other donors to help clear up the budget deficit.

She added that the destruction of crops caused by the hurricanes, combined with a rise in global food prices, expose Haitians to the risk of malnutrition.

"Food security is not only a source of suffering, it is a direct threat to economic growth and global stability," Clinton said.

"The United States will provide a 15-million dollar in-kind contribution of food to help Haiti as it rebuilds," she said.

"But that is not an answer. We need to revitalize Haitian agriculture. We need to reforest the upper watersheds," Clinton added.

Clinton said the 20 million dollars for infrastructure in order to help with the flow of goods and services.

Some of it would go toward roads which she called "beyond inadequate," including those needed to build up the tourism industry.

The IDB and Haitian government organizers said the conference will focus the international community's support on priority projects in the Haitian government's economic recovery plan, a two-year program aimed at generating 150,000 jobs."

Also attending the conference is Haitian Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is facing a serious economic crisis that led to bloody food riots last year. Haitian President Rene Preval has forecast a difficult 2009 amid the global financial downturn.

Clinton is due to arrive Thursday in Haiti and travel later the same day to the Dominican Republic -- both countries share the island of Hispaniola -- before heading Friday to Trinidad and Tobago to join President Barack Obama for the Summit of the Americas.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Clinton will meet with Haitian President Rene Preval "to discuss issues of common concern, including stability, security and assistance."

AFP, April 15, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) - International donors are pledging to provide Haiti with $324 million over the next two years as the Western Hemisphere's poorest country struggles to recover from last year's devastating hurricanes and food riots.

The pledges were well below the $900 million the Haitian prime minister says the government needs to pay for a deficit, education, infrastructure, health and other items over the next two years.

Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis' government has developed a two-year economic recovery plan after political turmoil and natural disasters ruined three consecutive years of economic growth and improved stability.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says giving Haiti help during a period of global financial turmoil is a "test of resolve and commitment" to those in dire need.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday urged international donors to provide desperately needed money to Haiti as the Western Hemisphere's poorest country struggles to recover from last year's devastating hurricanes and food riots.

Clinton, who is to visit Haiti on Thursday, told a conference of more than 30 donor countries and international organizations that giving Haiti help during a period of global financial turmoil is a "test of resolve and commitment" to those in dire need.

The United States, Clinton said, is providing nearly $290 million in non-emergency aid to Haiti this year.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Haiti is at a critical moment and will either slide backward into deeper poverty and misery or move forward with the help of world donors.

"We have an opportunity to bring ... a measure of real promise and potential prosperity," Ban told the conference.

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group, a conflict watchdog, warned last month that deepening poverty and ineffective governance have left Haiti at risk for renewed violence and political instability.

The group pressed international donors to provide the struggling Caribbean country $3 billion over the next few years.

Donor countries and groups meeting in Washington were expected to consider a two-year economic recovery plan developed by the government of Prime Minister Michele Duvivier Pierre-Louis.

Pierre-Louis spoke at the conference of a "feeling of urgency" and the "overwhelming task" that both her government and outside donors face during the worst global financial crisis in decades.

"The population is watching us, judging us and commanding us to take action," she said, describing the need for new public services, jobs, investments and the building of roads to connect parts of the country that have been isolated for centuries.

The donor plan emerged after political turmoil and natural disasters hit Haiti, which had uncharacteristically enjoyed three consecutive years of economic growth and improved stability, the Inter-American Development Bank said.

That progress was interrupted when last April's riots over high food prices overthrew the prime minister. Months later, the country was pummeled by four storms that left nearly 800 people dead, caused $1 billion in damage and halted economic growth.

The donor plan hopes to reduce vulnerability to natural disasters, revitalize the economy and maintain access to basic services.

Clinton called on the world's powers to help Haiti:

- Improve security so that Haitians can work and go to school without fear of violence;

- Rebuild from the hurricanes;

- Develop a strong agricultural base in a country that suffers from 70 percent unemployment.

The United States has also given Haitians duty-free and quota-free access to its market for the next nine years.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, representing his personal foundation, and billionaire philanthropist George Soros, representing his Open Society Institute, were among others attending the conference.

The United Nations says continued humanitarian aid is critical to ensure many Haitians get enough food and can send their children to school.

By FOSTER KLUG, The Associated Press, April 15, 2009

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday urged international donors to provide desperately needed money to Haiti as it struggles to recover from last year's devastating hurricanes and food riots.

Clinton, who will visit Haiti tomorrow, told a conference of donor countries that the United States would provide nearly $290 million in nonemergency aid to Haiti this year.

International donors have pledged to provide Haiti with $324 million over the next two years, but that is well below the $900 million the Haitian prime minister says the government needs to pay for a deficit, education, infrastructure, health and other items over the next two years.

The Associated Press, April 15, 2009

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Venturing to the edge of a once lawless part of this impoverished capital, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed Thursday that the United States would not abandon Haiti, six months after it was devastated by storms and food riots.

She came with about $300 million in American aid, including $15 million in emergency food assistance, $20 million to rebuild the country's shattered roads and bridges and $2 million to train police officers, some of whom patrol the mean streets of this neighborhood, Cite Soleil.

"They've had a difficult time," Mrs. Clinton said, as she toured a dusty outdoor clinic staffed by United States Navy doctors and nurses. "Part of what we're trying to do is help Haiti reconstruct its services."

Mrs. Clinton also indicated that the Obama administration might suspend deportation orders for 30,000 Haitian immigrants in the United States, something Haiti has sought because of the money Haitians send home and because it says it could not cope with the returnees.

If the United States were to relax its policy, she said, it would apply only to Haitians who were living in the United States and served with deportation orders before President Obama took office.

"We don't want to encourage other Haitians to make the dangerous journey across the water," she said.

Mrs. Clinton's visit came a day before she was to join Mr. Obama at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, and two days after an international donors' conference in Washington, which raised $324 million in emergency and long-term assistance for Haiti.

That sum is barely a third of what experts say Haiti needs to rebuild, though officials here insisted that they were satisfied, given the global economic crisis.

After years of hard-fought progress, the mood here is bleak. Four tropical storms last September killed 800 people in Haiti and wiped out 15 percent of its annual economic output. The country now depends on foreign aid for 60 percent of its national budget.

Political tensions are also rising, with a long-delayed election scheduled for Sunday. Political parties barred from fielding candidates have threatened to disrupt the vote.

Several opposition leaders stood behind President Rene Preval at a news conference, and Mrs. Clinton reminded them, aides said, that she and Mr. Obama had put aside their differences after the election.

Mr. Preval played politics, too, urging the United States to lift its trade embargo against Cuba. That is a message Mr. Obama is likely to hear from several other Latin American leaders at the summit meeting.

Mrs. Clinton said the Obama administration, having relaxed restrictions on travel and financial transfers for relatives of people living in Cuba, was now waiting for a reciprocal gesture from Havana.

Mrs. Clinton is the first secretary of state to visit Haiti since 2005, and the most senior official to venture near Cite Soleil, which two years ago was a war zone under the control of armed gangs. But she confined herself to the clinic, which was heavily guarded.

Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was more adventurous when he visited Haiti two weeks ago, stopping at a school in the gritty heart of Cite Soleil. He and Mrs. Clinton have sentimental ties to Haiti, she said: they toured the country as newlyweds and bought five Haitian paintings, two of which hang in their kitchen in Chappaqua, N.Y.

With the help of United Nations peacekeeping troops, Cite Soleil has been largely pacified. Haitian and American officials hold it up as an example of the progress Haiti had made since Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in a military coup in 2004.

Despite Mrs. Clinton's obvious feelings for Haiti, the country seemed too careworn to return the affection.

At a garment factory that benefits from an American law that guarantees tariff-free exports of clothing to the United States, Mrs. Clinton said, "What you're seeing is what needs to happen in Haiti."

But as she walked past banks of sewing machines turning out athletic pants, the mostly female workers watched her, silent and stone-faced. Then she slipped out a side door, and the machines began whirring again.






By Mark Landler, The New York Times, April 16, 2009

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will travel to Haiti and the Dominican Republic later this week before heading to a Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, the State Department said.

Clinton is due to arrive in Haiti on Thursday, and go to the Dominican Republican later that day before heading to Trinidad and Tobago on Friday, her spokesman Robert Woods told reporters.

"While in Haiti, Secretary Clinton will meet with President Rene Preval to discuss issues of common concern, including stability, security and assistance," Wood said.

"In the Dominican Republic, the secretary plans to meet with President Leonel Fernandez and will discuss bilateral development cooperation and efforts to combat drug trafficking," he added.

Clinton will join President Barack Obama and 33 other democratically-elected leaders of the Western Hemisphere at the April 17-19 Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain.

"The theme of the summit is securing our citizens' future by promoting human prosperity, energy security and environmental sustainability," Wood said.

The fifth Summit of the Americas will be Obama's first opportunity since he was sworn in January 20 to address most members of the Organization of American States (OAS).

In Washington on Tuesday, Clinton will "attend and address" the Haiti Donors? Conference, the State Department said in a statement.

Haiti and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) said last Thursday they would convene the international donors conference for the tiny poverty-wracked nation.

The two said that "the conference will focus the international community's support on priority projects in the Haitian government's economic recovery plan, a two-year program aimed at generating 150,000 jobs."

It is aimed at promoting investments in sectors such as infrastructure and manufacturing, participants added.

Besides Clinton, the State Department said, Haitian Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Canada Minister of International Cooperation Beverly Oda are to attend.

Still other participants include OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza, Open Society Institute Chairman George Soros, French Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights Rama Yade, International Monetary Fund Deputy Managing Director Takatoshi Kato, and World Bank Managing Director Juan Jose Daboub.

The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is facing a serious economic crisis that led to bloody food riots last year. Preval has forecast a difficult 2009 amid the global financial downturn.

AFP, April 14, 2009

WASHINGTON, April 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits Haiti on Thursday to talk about how to promote stability in the Western hemisphere's poorest nation despite its long history of violence and political unrest.

Riots sparked by skyrocketing food prices led to the ouster of Haiti's government last year, a period during which the Caribbean nation lost some 800 lives and suffered an estimated $1 billion in damage when four hurricanes roared through.

Clinton will visit two days after donor nations gather in Washington on Tuesday for a pledging conference to aid Haiti and just ahead of this weekend's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.

The State Department said Clinton, who arrives in Haiti on Thursday morning, would meet President Rene Preval to discuss "stability, security and assistance."

She then visits the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, where she will meet President Leonel Fernandez before flying to Trinidad and Tobago to join U.S. President Barack Obama at the regional summit.




By Sandra Maler, Reuters, April 13, 2009

Carrot-and-Stick Approach May Replace Sanctions Diplomacy

BANGKOK -- When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced recently that the United States was reviewing its policy of sanctions against Burma's government, it marked the final recognition of a global failure to modify the behavior of one of the world's most repressive regimes.

"Clearly, the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn't influenced the Burmese junta," Clinton said during a visit to Asia in February. "Reaching out and trying to engage them hasn't worked, either."

Her comments have triggered an intense debate about what approach toward Burma, also known as Myanmar, might prove more effective.

For the past 12 years, the United States has pursued a policy of increasingly tight sanctions -- blocking imports, investment and all other financial contacts and ultimately imposing sanctions that target individual junta members. Meanwhile, Burma's Asian neighbors tried the opposite approach, attempting to bend the junta to their will with a charm offensive known as constructive engagement, epitomized by the 1997 invitation to join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Neither path produced results.

Many diplomats and regional analysts say the most likely solution is a combination of carrot and stick: expanding aid and lifting some of the broad sanctions that have helped slow Burma's economic development to a crawl, while at the same time crafting sanctions that more effectively hit the bank accounts and travel plans of those who run and benefit from the regime.

"We are examining what we would call 'intelligent engagement,' " a senior Western diplomat said recently.

The opposition National League for Democracy, which won the 1990 elections but was never allowed to take power, was once among the most vocal advocates of sanctions, but the party's leader, Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, is under house arrest and unable to speak publicly, and many observers have said that recent ambiguous statements by the group suggest their position might be softening.

Sean Turnell, an Australian Burma expert, points out that there are significant problems with lifting even broad sanctions. In the absence of a gesture such as releasing the more than 2,100 political prisoners the junta is holding, such a move could be seen as rewarding intransigence and brutality, he said.

Thant Myint-U, author of a book about Burma's history titled "The River of Lost Footsteps" and the grandson of former U.N. secretary general U Thant, says the current sanctions on the regime are hurting ordinary Burmese more than generals.

"Any moral hazard of seeming to reward the generals is far outweighed by the moral hazard of not doing more to lift tens of millions of people out of poverty and finding a new and more dynamic way of promoting development and democracy in Burma," he said.

"Sanctions aren't a stick, and engagement is not a carrot -- it's almost the other way around," Thant added. "We need to find ways of increasing the right kind of aid, trade and investment, opening up the country, strengthening the middle class and laying the foundations for a meaningful democratic transition."

Turnell says that option is less clear-cut than it appears.

"The big argument for trading with Burma is that you are encouraging alternative loci of power in the commercial class, which has interests in protecting private property and the rule of law, but all that depends on the commercial activity being located outside the state sector, and that isn't the case in Burma," he said. "If you look at the gas, oil, gems, agriculture sectors, you see the overwhelming involvement of the state."

Pragmatists say that the broad sanctions are hurting Western interests in Burma and in the region as a whole.

"It was fairly clear that by ceasing our economic engagement in Burma we were allowing particularly the Chinese presence to solidify -- because they have a very amoral foreign policy -- and so I have been saying for several years that we need to have a different approach with Burma," Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), the head of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific affairs, said recently, referring to a trip he took to Burma in 2001.

Many argue that the answer is to concentrate on the sanctions that narrowly target members of the regime. "If you've got sanctions targeting specific individuals, they are not only sending the right message, more importantly they are sending the right message to the right people," Turnell said.

But he concedes that the pressure for some kind of change in policy is becoming overwhelming.

"People are looking for an opportunity to do something," he said. "There is a general despair that this goes on and on and the country keeps sinking deeper and deeper."

By Tim Johnston, The Washington Post, April 12, 2009

NEW YORK - The globe's icy poles took center stage in Washington last week at the first joint meeting of those international bodies governing - or trying to govern - the ever-more fragile Arctic and Antarctic regions.

According to the U.S. State Department, the joint conference brought together 400 diplomats and assorted regional managers from 47 countries last Monday - all keenly attuned to one latitude or another, as represented by either the Arctic Council, which tends to things up north, or the Antarctic Treaty System, which keeps watch down below.

Much was on the agenda - including the implications of a warming Arctic and the emergence, amid the northern thaw, of new commercial shipping routes where once there was only ice. But it was almost certainly the Antarctic tour operators in attendance who perked up when Hillary Rodham Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state, delivered her keynote address.

"The United States is concerned about the safety of the tourists and the suitability of the ships that make the journey south," she said.

"We have submitted a resolution that would place limits on landings from ships carrying large numbers of tourists."

Ms. Clinton also called for "greater international cooperation" to avoid further degradation of "the environment around Antarctica."

Certainly, tourism to the region is on the rise. In 1992, about 6,700 tourists visited Antarctica, according to data from the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators. For the 2008-2009 season, the association estimates the number will exceed 34,000.

What effect that increase is having on the Antarctic environment is difficult to measure - though certainly a spate of inadvertent landfalls (two tourist ships ran aground last season) and the widely reported sinking of a Canadian tourist ship in 2007 (no one was injured) have raised concerns about fuel spills and other eco-blights.

Add to that data from the United Nations Tourism Organization, which estimated last year that tourism was responsible for about 5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and Mrs. Clinton's call for stricter controls over Antarctic adventures would seem to raise a more fundamental question: How to strike a balance between appreciating the natural world through firsthand experience and protecting it by staying away - and staying at home?

"I think it's fair to say that 'sustainable tourism' is an oxymoron," said Auden Schendler, the executive director of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Co. in Colorado and the author of a new book "Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution."

"In a sustainable world," Mr. Schendler wrote in an e-mail message, "we're probably not flying all that much, or flying to ski, for example, or taking cruise ships to the Antarctic. But the problem now is, we don't have a moral magic wand that allows us to banish certain energy-intensive activities - like skiing," he said. "And even if you had that magic wand, where would you draw the line?"

In the case of the Antarctic, the question might also be, "Who should draw the line?"

Steve Wellmeier, the executive director of the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators, said last week that the limits discussed by Mrs. Clinton - which, among other things, would forbid ships carrying more than 500 passengers from allowing any of them to disembark and put foot on the continent and would limit the size of groups from smaller ships to 100 in any particular spot - have been observed by members of the Antarctic tour organization for some time.

The problem is, not every ship operator is a member of the industry association - and even for those who are, there is really no mechanism in place for enforcing the rules. The Antarctic, after all, has no internationally recognized governance, which leaves the 46 members of the Antarctic Treaty System - with widely ranging national interests and an only mildly binding rule-making apparatus - as the next closest thing.

"There are no policemen, per se," Mr. Wellmeier said. "It's largely an honor system - but there are many things in our society that function that way."

That honor system has functioned well enough so far, according to Bruce Poon Tip, the chief executive and founder of G.A.P. Adventures, a Toronto-based member of the tour operators group that includes Antarctica among its destinations. (It was a G.A.P. ship that sank in rough waters off the continent in 2007.)

"I don't know if my views are very popular," said Mr. Poon Tip, who seemed to agree in spirit with the idea that tighter regulations might be needed for Antarctic travel. But he also worried aloud that blanket regulations were wrong-headed, given that all travelers are not alike.

"There are two types of travelers who go down there," he said in quibbling with the visitor statistics published by the tour operators group. Those numbers, Mr. Poon Tip said, do not distinguish between visitors who make landfall (a number that has increased little, he argued, and usually includes careful, eco-minded travelers) and those merely riding cruise ships through the area.

The latter group is where things are growing, Mr. Poon Tip said, adding that "mainstream tourism is naturally not as sensitive to fragile ecosystems."

The fragile ecosystems themselves might not make the same distinction.

At least one study has shown that, even in protected areas where human activity is carefully managed, the effect on biodiversity can be profound.

Writing last year in the journal Conservation Letters, Sarah E. Reed and Adina M. Merenlender, both researchers in the department of environmental science, policy and management at the University of California, Berkeley, reported that even "quiet, non-consumptive recreation" - defined as things like hiking, biking and horseback riding - "may not be compatible with biodiversity protection."

Their study, which looked at the presence of mammalian carnivores in 28 parks and preserves in northern California, suggested that those comparatively low-impact activities still led to a steep decline in the density of native carnivores.

"Demand for recreation and nature-based tourism is forecasted to grow dramatically around the world," the researchers concluded, "and our findings suggest a pressing need for new approaches to the designation and management of protected areas."

Which gives added impetus to Mrs. Clinton's call for stricter regulations on tourism to the Antarctic last week - though both Mr. Poon Tip and Mr. Schendler emphasized that it was fundamentally unrealistic to expect people to stop globetrotting.

The trick, they both said, is to minimize the environmental and climate impacts of doing so - whether it's a ski vacation in Aspen or an adventure tour to Antarctica.

"There's a compelling argument to be made that eco-tourism is a huge piece of the conservation movement," Mr. Schendler said, "which would drop off if the travel stopped."

"You protect what you know, what you can see and feel," he added. "That's why solving climate is so hard."

By Tom Zeller Jr., The New York Times, April 12, 2009

Other foreign threats may pose greater concern for national security, but the problem of Somali pirates is proving just as difficult to address

Who would have guessed that one of President Obama's biggest foreign tests in his first 100 days would come from a ragtag band of pirates and a high-seas hostage drama?

Other foreign threats, such as the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, may pose greater concern for national security, but the problem of Somali pirates is proving just as difficult to address.

There are no easy solutions -- as has been made clear in numerous cases over the past year with the threat of piracy off the coast of Somalia escalating. The difficulty was proven again Friday when the French navy stormed a hijacked yacht, taking back the boat but costing the life of one hostage.

The case that now vexes the Obama administration involves Richard Phillips, the captain of an American cargo ship, who was taken hostage Wednesday after a failed hijacking attempt on his ship.

The Pentagon has dispatched naval firepower.The FBI sent in hostage negotiators and is investigating the Somali pirates, raising the possibility of federal charges against the men if they are captured. But Obama has remained silent on the standoff so far.

His top lieutenants have fired back with broad pledges to solve the problem of piracy in the region -- without providing detailed plans for doing so.

Attorney General Eric Holder said this week the United States will take whatever steps are needed to protect U.S. shipping interests against pirates, but he also said it is too early to tell what action the U.S. government might take against the pirates if they are captured.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for world action to "end the scourge of piracy."

"These people are nothing more than criminals, and we are brining to bear a number of our assets, including naval and FBI, in order to resolve the hostage situation and bring the pirates to justice," she said. "Piracy may be a centuries-old problem but we are working to bring an appropriate 21st century response."

For now, that modern-day response includes sending powerful warships, as well as high-tech surveillance planes.

History provides one cautionary lesson for Obama in dealing with the lawless African country. President Clinton's foreign policy was permanently altered after 18 U.S. soldiers died and 73 others were wounded during a failed mission to capture a Somalia warlord in 1993.

Piracy poses a unique set of challenges, and its threat has intensified in the past year.

The International Maritime Bureau and the International Maritime Organization said attacks in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia more than doubled from 2007 to 2008. According to the United Nations, Somalia's pirate gangs raked in roughly $25 million to $30 million last year alone.

The top U.N. envoy for Somalia has said the piracy problem cannot be resolved until proper governance is restored in the country.

"This problem is at sea, but the root causes are on land," Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah said. He urged U.N. Security Council members to urgently revisit rampant insecurity and instability in Somalia, which has not had a functioning government since 1991.

"We go after rogue states, why not anarchic states," he said.

In private, U.S. officials acknowledged they lack the firepower to patrol the lawless Somali coast on their own. The Obama administration is considering changes to an international anti-piracy partnership proposed by the Bush administration in its last weeks.

Outside advisers have recommended expanding the task force to hunt pirate "mother ships" far from shore. These larger vessels shelter the small speedboats that pirates usually use to quickly close on a commercial ship and scramble aboard.

"We are looking for ways to increase the effectiveness of what we are doing," Clinton said.

FOX News, April 11, 2009

In the past week, mixed progress as a US journalist is charged with spying amidst positive statements from both countries.

Istanbul, Turkey - As Iranians celebrated the Persian New Year recently, they witnessed the start of indirect talks between Iran and the United States, in what promises to become a highly orchestrated effort to ease three decades of mutual hostility.

Each country is drawing lessons from failed past attempts at detente. They are learning from the mistakes of their respective former leaders, Bill Clinton and Mohamad Khatami, in the late 1990s, and the unbending stance of George W. Bush.

This week has seen mixed progress between the two nations. On Wednesday, in a departure from Bush administration policy, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the United States would become a "full participant," not simply an observer, at talks with Iranian officials about the nuclear issue. The talks include the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council - Britain, China, France, and Russia - as well as Germany.

The same day, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that he welcomed talks with the US if they were based on "honesty, justice, and respect."

But that gesture was marred by the announcement that a detained American journalist, Roxana Saberi, had been changed with spying and would be put on trial next week. The US has been pressing for her release since she was detained two months ago.

Iran also announced advances for its nuclear program, including new high-speed centrifuges to enrich uranium and the inauguration of a nuclear-fuel production facility. Both developments were described by Western scientists as long expected.

Reaching out by video

In March, President Obama reached out in a Nowruz video message, using the spring "moment of renewal" to call for a "new beginning" with Iran, in which "the old divisions are overcome."

With uncharacteristic speed that signified the importance of Mr. Obama's gesture, Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei, replied the next day with a lengthy speech, during which he said Iran would reciprocate: "You change, and we will also change our behavior, too."

But as followers chanted "Death to America," Ayatollah Khamenei also listed longstanding grievances and cases of US "arrogance" - even charging that Mr. Obama "insulted Iran" from his first days in office. Khamenei sought both to lay down parameters for the debate in Iran and limit future anger among hard-liners that America's "Great Satan" status might begin to shift.

Iran expected "real" change, Khamenei said, not just "talks with pressure": "They say they have extended their hands towards Iran. If the extended hand has a velvet glove but under it is an iron hand, then this does not have good meaning."

Still, Obama's message was crafted to avoid past pitfalls, which "suggests historical thinking on the part of the Obama administration, and that's very important," says Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert at the University of Hawaii.

By addressing both the people and leaders of Iran, the short message was a departure. The key was "this idea that we are not going to play Iranian leaders against each other, and we are not going to distinguish between the people of Iran and the government," says Ms. Farhi. "The latter was a rejection of the Bush policy, and the former a clear understanding of what was wrong with Clinton's message, which spoke of 'nice' leaders and 'bad' leaders."

Reconciliation lessons from 1997

The most instructive history comes from the exchange that began in 1997, after Mr. Khatami was elected president by a landslide on promises of "reform" and ending Iran's isolation. The reconciliation dance began, and both sides appeared intent on progress. Clinton welcomed Khatami's win, saying he had "never been pleased" by the US-Iran divide, and spoke of Iranians as a "very great people."

Khatami reciprocated, speaking months later of his "great respect" for Americans and calling for a "thoughtful dialogue." Clinton welcomed the words the next day, saying he would like "nothing better" than talks - which would include terrorism and "violent attacks on the peace process."

The relative rhetorical warmth continued for months, even as hard-line newspapers and critics accused Khatami of undermining a pillar of the revolution. Even Khamenei spoke out during a Friday prayer sermon, dismissing reports of a "tendency" to reconcile with America.

Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader since 1989, resented the Clinton-era eagerness to praise only elected officials like Khatami while criticizing those in far more powerful unelected posts such as his.

"The most important lesson [from the Clinton era] is treating Iran in its totality, and accepting that internal dynamics ... cannot be manipulated in direct ways by the United States," says Farhi.

Obama hit notes that indicated a new understanding of Iran in the White House: He mentioned the "Islamic Republic of Iran" (providing de facto recognition of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution for the first time), spoke of engagement "grounded in mutual respect," and minimized chances of regime change - often evoked by Bush-era officials - by noting that this US-Iran process "will not be advanced by threats."

He quoted the revered Persian poet Saadi, expressing the shared humanity of "the children of Adam," and offered New Year greetings in Farsi.

Iran's list of grievances

But it won't be easy to get to real business, as Khamenei's list of grievances against the US is widely shared in Iran.

Iranians, to this day, remember with approbation the words of then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who in 2000 appeared to apologize for the CIA coup that toppled Iran's popular prime minister in 1953. But further along in the same speech, she railed against the "reality" of Iran's support for terrorism, its human rights violations, and continuing efforts "to acquire nuclear weapons." If that did not erase the "apology" in the minds of Iran's leaders, then it was her pointed disdain for "unelected hands" that control the regime - a direct slap at Khamenei.

Iran's lesson? That Washington was insincere. A more biting example came in 2001, when Iran shared information to help the US fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Islamic Republic was later instrumental in helping US diplomats form the postwar government, and hoped the cooperation would expand.

But in what today remains a cautionary tale for decisionmakers in Tehran, Iran was labeled by Mr. Bush as part of his Axis of Evil. And beyond the first step of Obama and Khamenei "speaking" to each other, will be subsequent moves.

"The reality is you have a new [US leader] who has talked about change, so the question is, what does that change involve?" asks Farhi. "If it's sticks and carrots, or the change involves more and more robust sticks and carrots, it's not going to go anywhere."

By Scott Peterson, The Christian Science Monitor, April 11, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday the United States is trying to recruit additional countries to join anti-piracy naval operations along the African east coast in the wake of this week's pirate attack on a U.S.-flagged cargo ship. Clinton vowed to bring the hijackers of that ship to justice.

Obama administration officials are working to augment the international anti-piracy task force off the Somali coast, even as efforts continue to free the American captain still held by pirates on a lifeboat from the container ship.

At a State Department press event, Clinton called those holding ship captain Richard Phillips nothing more than criminals. She said numerous U.S. assets including the Navy and Federal Bureau of Investigation are being brought to bear to end the hostage situation and bring the pirates to justice.

An anti-piracy resolution by the U.N. Security Council in December authorized countries around the world to deploy patrol vessels in anti-piracy operations off Somalia and warships from at least a dozen countries - including the United States, Russia, China, India and Japan -- are currently deployed.

Clinton spoke after concluding a meeting that included the piracy issue with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and their Australian counterparts. She said the administration is seeking a 21st-Century response to a centuries old problem, which should involve more task force contributors and also address the issue of Somalia's chronic instability.

"We are looking for ways to increase the effectiveness of what we are doing, including the recruitment of additional partners to be part of the surveillance work that is done. But we also understand that the instability in Somalia is a contributing factor to those who take to the seas in order to board ships, hijack them, intimidate and threaten their crews, and then seek ransom," she said.

The incident involving the container ship Maersk Alabama began Wednesday when pirates boarded the vessel some 500 kilometers off the Somalia coast. The 20-man crew regained control of the Danish-owned, U.S.-flagged ship. But captain Phillips was taken hostage - an apparent voluntary act to spare other crew members - as the pirates fled aboard a lifeboat.

A tense confrontation has continued since, with a U.S. Navy destroyer on the scene and negotiators led by the FBI talking to the pirates. Defense Secretary Gates was sparing in his remarks about the situation, given the sensitivity of the case. "We are monitoring the situation very closely. The safe return of the captain is the top priority. We obviously have a naval presence in the area and other assets. And we are obviously looking at our options. But again foremost in our minds is the safety of the captain," he said.

The United Nations says Somali pirates carried out at least 120 attacks on ships last year and netted combined ransom payoffs of about $150 million dollars.

The rate of hijackings slowed early this year as international patrolling increased in the relatively narrow Gulf of Aden, but there has been a surge of attacks in recent days in the Indian Ocean far off the Somali coast.

Over the past week, pirates have seized a German cargo ship, a French yacht, a Taiwanese fishing vessel and a Yemeni tugboat. The seized American ship had been bound for Mombassa, Kenya with a load of relief supplies for the U.N. World Food Program.

By David Gollusti, Voice of America, April 9, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) - It was such a gorgeous spring day Thursday in the nation's capital, with blue skies, plenty of sunshine and 60-degree temperatures, that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton decided to move an Oval Office chat outdoors.

Reporters being escorted up the White House driveway after an event on the South Lawn were surprised to see the president, in his shirt sleeves, and his top diplomat exit the Oval Office and head straight for his daughters' swing set, set up nearby.

Clinton was seen fingering a wooden picnic table that came with the set before they sat down across from each other.

There was disagreement over whether Obama waved to the group, or whether he had shooed it away.

In any event, reporters were escorted back down the driveway where they remained for several minutes before being taken on a different route to the White House.

The Associated Press, April 10, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Thursday expressed skepticism about Iranian claims of new advances in its uranium enrichment program. But she said the claims underscore the need for Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency and return to negotiations on its nuclear program.

The Iranian claims of major advances in its nuclear program came only a day after the Obama administration said it was ready to reverse previous U.S. policy and directly engage Iran over the issue.

But in a talk with reporters, Clinton declined to call the Iranian statements a rebuff to the U.S. overture and also expressed some skepticism that Tehran has actually made enrichment gains.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Thursday opened a plant he said was capable of producing uranium fuel in industrial quantities and said Iran is testing two new high-capacity enrichment centrifuges.

An Iranian nuclear official announced separately that Tehran is running 7,000 enrichment centrifuges at its Natanz enrichment complex, more than 1,000 more than previously reported.

Clinton, speaking after U.S.-Australian security talks that included the Iranian nuclear issue, said U.S. officials do not attribute any particular meaning to the latest Iranian claims.

"We don't know what to believe about the Iranian program. We've heard many different assessments and claims over a number of years. One of the reasons we are participating in the P-Five-Plus-One is to enforce the international obligations that Iran should be meeting to insure that the IAEA is the source of credible information, because there is a great gap between what the IAEA observed about six or seven weeks ago, and what the Iranians are now claiming," she said.

In a mid-February report, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had about four thousand centrifuges in operation at the Natanz plant and another 1,500 being tested.

Iran contends its enrichment operation is part of peaceful nuclear program while the United States and European allies believe it is at least partially weapons related.

The P5+1, the five permanent U.N. Security Council member countries and Germany, have offered Iran a range of economic and political incentives to end enrichment and return to negotiations over the program.

The Bush administration had refused to take a direct role in the talks unless Iran first suspended the enrichment drive.

But the State Department said Wednesday the United States is dropping that pre-condition and would sit at the table at the next P5+1 meeting with the Iranians, being arranged by European Union chief diplomat Javier Solana.

Clinton said Iran would benefit if it cooperated with the international community on the nuclear issue and abided by obligations of transparency in its program to which the United States believes Iran is bound.

By David Gollust, Voice of America, April 10 2009

You might have thought that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would have retired her nearly $6 million presidential campaign debt a long time ago.

Apparently not, judging from an e-mail sent out today by Hillary Clinton for President announcing a lottery -- only $5 a ticket -- and offering as prizes a day with Bill Clinton in New York (as part of "your own special New York City weekend"), a trip to the American Idol Finale in Los Angeles or a flight to Washington for you and a guest for a tour of the District with political operatives and commentators James Carville and Paul Begala.

Almost every dollar raised from the Carville-Begala pitch will go toward someone who those advisers had quite a stormy relationship with -- Mark Penn, the pollster-strategist who was ousted midway through the 2008 primary season.

According to year-end filings with the Federal Election Commission, Clinton's campaign had outstanding debts of $5,943,385. Of that total, Penn's firm was still owed $5,362,278 as of Dec. 31.

In the e-mail from Carville, he says that he "knew it was going to take an extraordinary effort to help pay off Hillary Clinton's campaign debt." Especially after the economy sank and the job situation turned dreary.

So the idea would be "to have some fun" while settling her debt, Carville says. "These amazing prizes are only being offered online and are available only for a limited time," he says, "so please don't delay in acting today."

Then you can "win one of three truly once in a lifetime opportunities." A day with Bill, a night at Americana Idol or, he says, you can "talk politics with me" -- and Begala.

And you can, of course, contribute more than the price of a ticket.

By Al Kamen, The Washington Post, April 9, 2009

Iran's president says he is wary, but willing

Yesterday's announcement by the Obama administration was the most significant in a string of overtures to Iran, including a videotaped message from Obama to the Iranian people released on the Persian New Year, the partial lifting of a longstanding ban on face-to-face interaction between some senior State Department officials and their Iranian counterparts, and a direct diplomatic note passed by Clinton to the Iranian government regarding the fate of an Iranian-American journalist who has been arrested in Iran and charged with espionage.

Iran insists that it has the legal right to try to master the complex process of uranium enrichment to help create electricity, and has agreed to allow United Nations inspectors to monitor its actions. But the United States and its European and Arab allies insist that Iran lost the right to enrich uranium when it kept its enrichment facility secret and out of view of inspectors for more than a decade, raising suspicions that it is aimed at creating a weapon.

Still, Iran refused to halt its program.




By Farah Stockman, The Boston Globe, April 9, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Navy summoned the FBI in crisis atmosphere Thursday for advice on how to rescue a cargo ship captain held hostage in the Indian Ocean by pirates who seized his vessel off the coast of Somalia.

At the same time, the shipping company Maersk demanded that Capt. Richard Phillips be returned and called his safety its No. 1 priority. The Obama administration, for its part, weighed options in an incident at sea that dramatized the limits of U.S. military power in international cops-and-robbers scenarios.

At the FBI, spokesman Richard Kolko described the bureau's hostage negotiating team as "fully engaged" with the military in strategizing ways to retrieve the ship's captain and secure the Maersk Alabama and its roughly 20-person U.S. crew.

The FBI was summoned as the Pentagon substantially stepped up its monitoring of the hostage standoff, sending in P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft and other equipment and securing video footage of the scene.

Defense Department officials would not say Thursday morning just how close the USS Bainbridge was to a small lifeboat which was said to be drifting nearby, in the vicinity of the Maersk Alabama cargo ship.

But one official, speaking on grounds of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said the pirates "could see it with their eyes." Another official said there were several other vessels in the vicinity, but it was unclear whether any were the so-called "mother ship" that pirates use to drop them at hijacking sites.

The pirates were still holding the 55-year-old Phillips, from Underwood, Vt., after the American crew retook the ship Wednesday and the hostage-takers fled into the lifeboat. Hostage negotiators and military officials have been working around the clock to free Phillips.

In his statement, Kolko said: "FBI negotiators stationed at Quantico (Va.) have been called by the Navy to assist with negotiations with the Somali pirates and are fully engaged in this matter."

In Norfolk, Va., home of the shipping company, spokesman Kevin Speers told reporters early Thursday that "the most recent contact" that Maersk had with the ship indicated that Phillips remained in the hands of the pirates.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking to reporters at the outset of a meeting with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and their Australian counterparts, said: "We're watching it very closely. Apparently, the lifeboat has run out of gas."

Speers said the company is "grateful" for the assistance of the government and the military and said it is doing all it can to cooperate.

The ship-taking presented Barack Obama with a tough new challenge just as he returned from his first European tour as president.

"We're deeply concerned and we're following it very closely," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said. "More generally, the world must come together to end the scourge of piracy."

The pirate-hostage drama was the first of its kind in modern history involving a U.S. crew.

"We have watched with alarm the increasing threat of piracy," said Denis McDonough, a senior foreign policy adviser at the White House. "The administration has an intense interest in the security of navigation."

The Bainbridge was among several U.S. ships, including the cruiser USS Gettysburg, that had been patrolling in the region. But they were about 345 miles and several hours away when the Maersk Alabama was seized, officials said.

The Obama administration has so far done no better than its predecessor to thwart the growing threat of piracy. Since January, pirates have staged 66 attacks, and they are still holding 14 ships and 260 crew members as hostages, according to the International Maritime Bureau, a watchdog group based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

There is too much area to cover and too many commercial vessels to protect for full-time patrols or escorts. U.S. legal authority is limited, even in the case of American hostages and a cargo of donated American food. And the pirates, emboldened by fat ransoms, have little reason to fear being caught.

"The military component here is always going to be marginal," said Peter Chalk, an expert on maritime national security at the private Rand Corp.

According to the Navy, it would take 61 ships to control the shipping route in the Gulf of Aden, which is just a fraction of the 1.1 million square miles where the pirates have operated. A U.S.-backed international anti-piracy coalition currently has 12 to 16 ships patrolling the region at any one time.

Along the Somali coastline, an area roughly as long as the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, pirate crews have successfully held commercial ships hostage for days or weeks until they are ransomed. In the past week, pressured by naval actions off Somalia, the pirates have shifted their operations farther out into the Indian Ocean, expanding the crisis.

By PAULINE JELINEK and MATT APUZZO, The Associated Press, April 9, 2009

CHICAGO - When the evaluation team arrived last week, this city was ready.

"We back the bid" and "imagine" signs were affixed to buses, bridges and buildings. Flowerpots flanking Michigan Avenue teemed with blooms. Fountains around town, turned on weeks earlier than usual, spouted plumes of water. Volunteers by the hundreds braved rain, snow and wind to show their support for bringing the 2016 Summer Olympics to Chicago.

The 13 inspectors sent from the International Olympic Committee to assess Chicago's Olympic plans dined with Oprah Winfrey, toured the lakefront sites and attended nonstop meetings about the city's bid.

When it was over, they said they were impressed with the compactness of the city's Games and the enthusiasm of its business leaders and citizens.

"We are leaving with a very strong impression that the bid is a strong one," said the evaluation commission's chairwoman, Nawal el-Moutawakel, an Olympic gold medalist for Morocco. "But at the end, there is only one winner."

Next week the I.O.C. inspection team will repeat its evaluation process in Tokyo, one of four cities bidding for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Trips to Rio de Janeiro and Madrid are scheduled in subsequent weeks.

These are the commission's final visits before it submits a report by Sept. 2 on the technical aspects of each bid. On Oct. 2 the I.O.C. will vote on a winner.

"We're very pleased with their reaction, but we're not deluding ourselves," said Chicago 2016's bid leader, Patrick G. Ryan, the founder of Aon Corporation, the insurance broker. "They're going on to three great cities - three great cities that will show well."

Videos of support were shown from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who grew up in suburban Chicago, and the newly minted Hall of Fame basketball player Michael Jordan. Perhaps more influential than anyone else in this bid effort, which cost $50 million, is President Obama. Mayor Richard M. Daley has called him "the quarterback of our bid."

"I know that he and the rest of the country want to bring the Olympics back to the United States of America," Daley said. "Now we just have to win votes."

President Obama's home is within walking distance of the proposed Olympic Stadium in Washington Park on the South Side. He has supported the bid from the outset, taping several promotional videos, including one that greeted the I.O.C. team here last week.

But in the uncertainty of the current economic crisis, Chicago simply cannot rest on the help of cheerleaders, no matter how prominent. While the other bid cities have received blanket guarantees from their governments to cover any operating budget shortfalls, Chicago does not have that cushion.

The city has promised to cover $500 million if Chicago 2016 does not stay within its estimated Games budget of $4.8 billion. The state would provide another $250 million if there are overruns. Adding private insurance and a contingency fund to the government money would raise the amount to about $1.2 billion, bid officials said.

Jacques Rogge, the I.O.C. president, said last week that Chicago's guarantees would be ample.

Gilbert Felli, the executive director of the Olympic Games and a member of the evaluation commission, said he expected the worldwide recession to end by 2016, but did not want to be naive.

"We know we all live in the world of risk, so what we're going to do is analyze the amount of risk," Felli said.

In a race as close as this one, even perceived disadvantages will matter.

In an index calculated by GamesBids.com, an influential, independent Web site based in Canada that looks at the business of the bidding process, about 3 points separate the frontrunner, Tokyo, from the last-place city, Chicago. Rio is second. Madrid is third.

"In 2012 there were clear leaders and clear losers, with about 17 points between first and last," said Robert Livingstone, the Web site's producer. "Now the race is very tight. It shows that anyone can win this."

The Chicago bid team said it hoped this would be the United States' time. This country has not been host to a Summer Olympics since Atlanta in 1996; the 2002 Salt Lake City Games were the last domestic Winter Olympics.

New York finished an embarrassing fourth of five cities in voting for the 2012 Games, which went to London. But United States Olympic Committee and Chicago 2016 officials said they learned from New York's failures. "This city owes New York a great debt of gratitude," said George Hirthler, a senior strategist on Chicago and New York's Olympic bids as well as seven others.

New York's inability to secure a deal for an Olympic Stadium on the Far West Side of Manhattan in the waning weeks of the competition created a gaping hole in its bid.

Spurred by that defeat in 2005, the U.S.O.C. regrouped, setting up a process for choosing future United States bid cites that mirrors the one used by the international committee. The new process requires bid cities to have the land, the approval and the private financing for an Olympic Stadium.

Chicago beat Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco under those new guidelines.

"So we know that this bid is not going to backfire," Hirthler said. "It's very, very strong."

Since New York's loss, the United States committee has worked hard to strengthen its relationship with the bid city. For most of the New York bid, the relationship between the two entities was rocky because U.S.O.C. leadership was in upheaval.

"As an Olympic committee back then, we just didn't have a lot to offer the New York bid, so they basically had to construct an entire operation from scratch and battle on their own," said Bob Ctvrtlik, a member of the U.S.O.C.'s board and the vice chairman of international relations for Chicago 2016. "This time, we were able to jump start the Chicago bid with a four-year effort."

On a tour of potential sites Sunday, Chinese drummers and dragon dancers greeted the committee as it entered McCormick Place, a massive convention center on the city's South Side that would host 11 Olympic sports and 8 Paralympic sports.

The athletes' village would be built on city-owned land and include a beach. It would place 90 percent of the athletes within 15 minutes of traveling time to training and competition sites.

The proposed site of the Olympic Stadium is in Washington Park, where more than 200 rain-soaked volunteers stood to demonstrate the footprint of an 85,000-seat stadium that would host opening and closing ceremonies, and track and field.

After the Olympics the stadium would be pared down to 7,500 permanent seats to better fit the community's needs. Also in Chicago's plan is to use existing sports sites, including Soldier Field and the United Center.

The I.O.C. said that vision was consistent with its principles. Cities should not be stuck with arenas that go unused after the Games.

But bid officials are not resting on those encouraging words. They now must reach out to I.O.C. members worldwide to convince them that Chicago is worth their vote.

"We're not assuming anything," Ryan said. "We'll be out informing people more about Chicago. We'll be out establishing relationships, strengthening relationships. There's a lot of travel, a lot of hard work."




By Juliet Macur, The New York Times, April 8, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hillary Clinton said there would days - and nights - like this.

For the second time in four days and with less than three months in office, President Barack Obama has received the "3 a.m. phone call" that Clinton warned about. In their bitter presidential contest, Clinton suggested that her young rival was not ready for a national security crisis.

His tests are coming early: first from the borderline rogue government in North Korea, then from stateless bandits preying on shipping lanes off the East African coast.

Those calls presaged what surely will be many more middle-of-the-night wakeups for Obama as he battles a scourge of stateless brigands and terrorists operating with near impunity across an increasingly interconnected globe. His response to the early crises are being watched for signals of how he confronts enemies who operate outside the old rule book of international relations.

Through the day Wednesday, Obama and his White House were mainly silent on the pirates, leaving the talking to military officials more closely involved in whatever operations might be planned. The nearest U.S. Navy ship reportedly was at least 12 hours away when the Maersk Alabama was seized. And that spoke to the difficulty of the problem.

"The president is following the situation closely," said Denis McDonough, a top Obama security adviser, who noted the administration had "watched with alarm the increasing threat of piracy."

In the early morning hours Wednesday, as Obama was flying home from Iraq after an exhausting weeklong trek across Europe and the Middle East, he got word that a U.S.-flagged cargo ship was in the hands of Somali pirates. The seafaring hostage takers were holding a 20-member crew, all Americans. Historians said it was the first time in 200 years pirates had taken control of an American-flagged vessel.

As Air Force One was jetting west to Washington, Obama was still digesting the outcome of his travels, which included the first of the dreaded "3 a.m. calls." That came when he was awakened early Sunday in his quarters in Prague with news that North Korea, in defiance of the world community, had launched a missile in what was believed to be the test of a nuclear delivery vehicle.

The U.S. was expecting that news and Clinton, now Obama's top diplomat who no longer hawks the 3 a.m. campaign line, was traveling with the president. She worked the phones, and Obama issued the expected words of condemnation. Calls went out for the U.N. Security Council to convene.

As troubling as the North Korean launch was, there was an international framework in place to confront Kim Jong Il and his nuclear ambitions - mainly through threats of deeper sanctions and further isolation.

Not so with the pirates operating out of lawless Somalia. The world's navies have proved an impotent force against the attackers' furtive quick-strike tactics. The International Maritime Bureau says 260 crew on 14 hijacked ships are being held off the coast of Somalia, including the Maersk Alabama.

"Although the United States and other nations are working in a loose coalition to prevent piracy, the dwindling number of ships in our Navy amplifies the impact of this menace," said retired Navy Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, who was in charge of the USS Cole destroyer when it was attacked by suicide bombers in 2000.

Lippold said the administration deserves praise for recommending more combat ships and unmanned aerial vehicles to help interdict this type of threat, but he also said the Navy "simply needs more ships and at a quicker rate than we are currently building or plan to build."

Short of flooding the waters with fighting ships, the only course of attack would seem to be special operations assaults on the ground in Somalia. But Obama is sure to remember the outcome - Black Hawk Down - when the last young Democratic president, Hillary Clinton's husband Bill, sent U.S. forces ashore in that lawless land.

Just a year ago, then-Sen. Clinton aired a brutal television ad that portrayed her as the leader voters would want on the phone when a crisis occurred at 3 a.m. "while your children are safe and asleep."

Obama fired back with an ad of his own that said, "In a dangerous world, it's judgment that matters."

Now nobody knows that better than Obama.

By Steve R. Hurst, The Associated Press, April 6, 2009

The U.S. is gearing up for a standoff with the band of pirates who hijacked a U.S.-flagged cargo ship off the coast of Somalia as a Navy warship reportedly arrived at the scene early Thursday.

The crew of the Maersk Alabama were able to regain control of the vessel Wednesday, but the pirates escaped with the captain as a captive. Kevin Speers, a spokesman for the owner of ship, told the Associated Press that a U.S. Navy warship arrived at the scene, and the pirates and their hostage were a short distance away in one of the ship's lifeboats.

Family members said Capt. Richard Phillips surrendered to the pirates to secure the safety of the crew.

"What I understand is that he offered himself as the hostage," said Gina Coggio, 29, half sister of Phillips' wife. "That is what he would do. It's just who he is and his response as a captain."

It is unclear, however, how the standoff will end, given that Western countries in the past have faced legal difficulties in pursuing such pirates in international waters.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Wednesday for world action to "end the scourge of piracy" as U.S. warships raced to confront the pirates.

"Specifically, we are now focused on this particular act of piracy and the seizure of a ship that carries 21 American citizens. More generally, we think the world must come together to end the scourge of piracy," she said.

A defense official said four pirates are in the lifeboat with their captive, and there is no clear evidence that a pirate remains captive with the U.S. crew.

Earlier Wednesday, speaking on the ship's satellite phone, one of the 20 crew members said they had been taken hostage but managed to seize one pirate and then successfully negotiate their own release.

"All the crew members are trained in security detail in how to deal with piracy," Maersk CEO John Reinhart told reporters. "As merchant vessels we do not carry arms. We have ways to push back, but we do not carry arms."

John Harris, CEO of HollowPoint Security Services, which specializes in maritime security, said that the crew's overtaking the pirates could help prevent future hijackings, especially since the military can't protect the entire high seas.

"Any time you can get intel from them, they can give you any kind of significant information, they more than likely will not, but anything we can get will always help us in the future," Harris told FOX News.

"Naval vessels ... can't be everywhere at one time, just like law enforcement," he said, noting that the U.S. Navy has been protecting the most vulnerable shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean.

"If you saturate an area long enough in the shipping lanes, if you saturate it with war ships long enough, they venture out. In this case that's what they did. They want 350 miles out of the coast where no Naval vessels were present," he said.

As for the boldness of the pirates taking a ship operating under a U.S. flag, Harris said pirates don't care which ship they grab.

"We have not seen it matters at all. This is a business to them. They are not intended on carrying what cargo we're carrying. All they want to do is see a dollar figure. They know if they catch a big ship, they get big money. All they want is ransom out of this. They are not worried about crew or cargo," Harris said.

Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman said earlier Wednesday he has "no information to suggest the 20 crew members of the Maersk Alabama have been harmed by the pirates."

During its one communication with the ship, Maersk was told the crew was safe, Reinhart said. He would not release the names of the crew members.

Cmdr. Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, said that it was the first pirate attack "involving U.S. nationals and a U.S.-flagged vessel in recent memory."

Wednesday's incident was the first such hostage-taking involving U.S. citizens in 200 years. In December 2008, Somali pirates chased and shot at a U.S. cruise ship with more than 1,000 people on board but failed to hijack the vessel.

The top two commanders of the ship graduated from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, the Cape Cod Times reported Wednesday.

Andrea Phillips, the wife of Capt. Phillips of Underhill, Vt., said her husband has sailed in those waters "for quite some time" and a hijacking was perhaps "inevitable."

The Cape Cod Times reported his second in command, Capt. Shane Murphy, was also among the 20 Americans aboard the Maersk Alabama.

Capt. Joseph Murphy, a professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, says his son is a 2001 graduate who recently talked to a class about the dangers of pirates.

The newspaper reported the 33-year-old Murphy had phoned his mother to say he was safe.

The 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama was carrying emergency relief to Mombasa, Kenya, at the time it was hijacked, for the Copenhagen-based container shipping group A.P. Moller-Maersk.

Robert A. Wood, Deputy State Department Spokesman, told reporters the ship was carrying "vegetable oil, corn soy blend and other basic food commodities bound for Africa."

Fox News, April 09, 2009

A blue-ribbon panel is urging Congress and the Obama administration today to toughen federal coastal protections in the face of rising climate threats and increased pressure from offshore energy producers.

The Joint Ocean Commission Initiative outlined a short-term agenda calling for a new White House-level ocean policy coordinator and the long-stalled ratification of the Law of the Sea treaty.

"Our continuing complacency in the face of rising threats to the health and economic viability of our oceans and coasts from climate change, pollution and intense coastal development is no longer tolerable," said retired Navy Adm. James Watkins, the co-chairman of the initiative. "Unless we commit to advancing our understanding, management and conservation of oceans and coasts, I am afraid the result will be enduring, and perhaps irreversible, changes that will jeopardize their contributions to this and future generations."

Commissioners presented their 44-page report to lawmakers and the Obama administration. The report says a "lack of a rational management strategy" and weakened ocean science have resulted in sharp declines in the goods and services that the oceans, coasts and Great Lakes have provided.

Declining coastal resources are creating a "sense of urgency" because of the impact on communities, the economy and quality of life, the report says.

Scientists are predicting that warming temperatures will cause rising seas, more intense storms and increased coastal flooding and erosion. Thus, the report warns, climate change poses a grave economic threat in coastal areas -- home to more than half the U.S. population and contributor of 68 percent of the nation's gross domestic product.

The commission's new recommendations follow on massive reports from the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and the Pew Oceans Commission five years ago. Those reports were widely quoted on Capitol Hill and in the Bush administration, which sought to accomplish their recommendations. The commission has updated those reports to reflect growing concerns about climate change.

"The issues we raised have become even more critical since then," said Paul Kelly, one of the commissioners and president of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation.

The Bush administration took some actions in response to the previous reports, including the creation of a committee on ocean policy at the White House level. The commission is now calling for a higher-level appointment in the White House who would be responsible for coordinating ocean and coastal activities among federal agencies.

The commission also wants the new administration and Congress to act on some key policy areas that were left undone last year -- including legislation codifying NOAA and ratifying the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Law of the Sea

Described by many as a "constitution for the oceans," the Law of the Sea provides a framework for navigating and managing marine areas. It delineates offshore jurisdictions and outlines a global marine protection program.

More than 150 nations, along with the European Commission, have ratified the Law of the Sea, which took effect in 1994.

U.S. mining interests, the oil and gas industry, the Navy, and the Defense and State departments support the treaty. The Bush administration also supported treaty ratification, but the measure has been buried in the Senate.

The commission is hoping the Obama administration can push for ratification of the treaty, which commission members say is even more important as nations stake claims to rich Arctic resources exposed by melting ice.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for ratification of the treaty in her opening statement yesterday at a conference of nations gathered for the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting and the Arctic Council. Clinton also called for more protection for the polar regions.

"It is crucial we work together," Clinton said. "That starts with the Law of the Sea Convention, which President Obama and I are committed to ratifying, to give the United States and our partners the clarity we need to work together smoothly and effectively in the Arctic region."

By ALLISON WINTER, Greenwire, April 7, 2009

The Obama administration on Monday called for enhanced protection of the Earth's polar regions, proposing mandatory limits on Antarctic tourism and urging increased research in Antarctica and in the Artic. Opening a conference of parties to the Antarctic Treaty, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the recent collapse of an Antarctic ice bridge was a stark reminder that the poles were gravely threatened by climate change and human activity. She said the treaty, which also bans military use of the continent, could be a model for improved cooperation and coordination in the Arctic, which is not governed by a similar pact.





THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, April 7, 2009

For the first time, countries bound by separate international agreements managing human affairs at the two poles met together Monday in a special session at State Department headquarters in Washington.

The meeting was the first joint session of the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting and the Arctic Council. It preceded the annual meeting of parties to the 50-year-old Antarctic Treaty, which is being held in Baltimore and ends on April 17.

Big changes at both ends of the eEarth are clearly getting the world's attention. Normally, such events attract fairly low-level representatives. This time, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton kicked things off for the United States, discussing how the warming of the Arctic has "profound implications for global commerce," offering a mix of economic oppoortunities and environmental threats.

Mrs. Clinton also discussed recent signs of continued warming in Antarctica. On the Antarctic Peninsula and in West Antarctica, warming waters are eroding the floating ice shelves that scientists say have impeded the seaward flow of the huge ice sheets of the interior. Seasoned experts on Antarctic ice say there is plenty of reason for concern, given that warming waters could continue freeing up the ice sheets for centuries to come, leading to relentlessly rising seas. But glaciologists say there is no clear answer yet on how fast and far seas could rise.

Mrs. Clinton said the recent changes were a sign that "we have no time to lose in tackling this crisis."

She also brought up the issue of Antarctic tourism, alluding to recent accidents involving cruise ships. "The United States is concerned about the safety of the tourists and the suitability of the ships that make the journey south," Mrs. Clinton said. "We have submitted a resolution that would place limits on landings from ships carrying large numbers of tourists. We have also proposed new requirements for lifeboats on tourist ships to make sure they can keep passengers alive until rescue comes. And we urge greater international cooperation to prevent discharges from these ships that will further degrade the environment around the Antarctica." The meeting in Baltimore will explore issues from managing big science projects down south to assessing the impact of growing fisheries in Antarctic waters for krill, the small crustaceans that are a core ingredient in the food web there.




By Andrew C. Revkin, The New York Times, April 7, 2009

(CNN) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for tighter controls over tourism and other forms of pollution in Antarctica Monday, arguing for greater global cooperation to help preserve the continent's environmental and scientific research value.

Addressing a joint session of the Arctic Council and the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, Clinton said the Obama administration is concerned about the growing popularity of tourism in the southern polar region. She said the United States is proposing new international limits on the number of landings from tourist vessels, as well as greater cooperation to prevent potentially hazardous discharges from those ships.

Her remarks came as the United States helped mark the fiftieth anniversary of Antarctic Treaty, a model for "how agreements created for one age can serve the world in another," Clinton said.

Clinton also noted that President Barack Obama sent the U.S. Senate an amendment to the treaty last Friday that would spell out how the international community should better prevent and respond to environmental emergencies in Antarctica. The amendment would cover the question of liability tied to environmental damage in the ecologically sensitive region.

In addition, the United States has proposed an extension of the treaty's marine pollution rules "in a manner that more accurately reflects the boundaries of the antarctic ecosystem," she noted.

"The treaty is a blueprint for the kind of international cooperation that will be needed more and more to address the challenges of the twenty-first century," Clinton said.

"It is an example of smart power at its best - governments coming together around a common interest, and citizens, scientists, and institutions from different countries joined in scientific collaboration to advance peace and understanding."

Clinton argued that the treaty "and its related instruments remain a key tool in our efforts to address an urgent threat of this time: climate change."

A number of international scientific research stations have been established in Antarctica in part to help explore the probable causes and effects of global warming.

Twelve nations initially signed the Antarctic Treaty in 1959; 47 nations abide by it today.

CNN, April 6, 2009

By John Bacon, USA Today, April 06, 2009