PHUKET, Thailand - At every stop during her visit to Southeast Asia this week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered the same message: "The United States is back." She was talking about America's role in a region where its visibility had dimmed during the Bush years, but she might as well have been talking about herself.

After being sidelined at home in recent weeks by a broken elbow, Mrs. Clinton thrust herself back into the limelight, making headlines with unexpected statements about Iran, North Korea and Myanmar - at least one of which her aides felt obliged to clarify. And she reaffirmed that overseas, at least, she is not just the nation's chief diplomat but one of its most reliable celebrities, trailing perhaps only President Obama in star power.

In India, Mrs. Clinton was a ubiquitous presence on the three main news channels, giving interviews, sipping coffee with tycoons in Mumbai, marveling over climate-friendly buildings and dining at a New Delhi restaurant where one of the menus is named after her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

In Bangkok, she bantered with two Thai journalists in a televised town hall meeting, which, like previous public events with Mrs. Clinton in Turkey, Japan and South Korea, ended up being a cross between a Council on Foreign Relations panel and an episode of "Dr. Phil."

What, the secretary of state was asked, does she talk about with her husband? "We talk about our dog, who got sick and had to go to the vet," she said.

And what does she make of the beleaguered American economy? Mrs. Clinton invoked the name of Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, and his recent Congressional testimony before lamenting that unemployment was still high in many parts of the country. "We're not out of the woods," she said, in a guarded tone. "I guess that's the best way to say it."

Mrs. Clinton batted away suggestions that she had been marginalized. That, she said, was a canard propagated by the news media, which jumped on the fact that her recovery from the elbow injury forced her to cancel two foreign trips, including one with Mr. Obama to Russia.

"I'm not with the president on the trip and all of a sudden everybody goes, 'Oh, where is she? She's gone, disappeared,' " Mrs. Clinton said in a tone of mock horror, as the audience giggled.

Certainly, she seemed determined to continue her breakneck schedule back home. On Friday, after flying from Thailand, she scheduled a full day of meetings, including one with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. On Sunday, Mrs. Clinton is to appear live on "Meet the Press." And next week, she will be co-chairwoman of a high-level meeting with Chinese officials, along with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.

Mrs. Clinton stayed in the news, even from unlikely places like Phuket, a lush beach resort that played host this week to a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

She warned about nuclear links between North Korea and Myanmar. And she offered a rare glimpse into what the United States might do if Iran did not respond to its diplomatic overture. Her comments about the possibility of extending a "defense umbrella" over the Middle East ricocheted around foreign-policy circles.

Mrs. Clinton's aides did their best to convince reporters traveling with her that she was not signaling any change in administration policy. But when a secretary of state muses publicly about one of the world's most sensitive diplomatic problems, the story quickly takes on a life of its own.

In India, Mrs. Clinton encountered a different problem: a savvy environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, who seized on a visit by her to a "green building" outside New Delhi to repeat India's rejection of American demands that it accept binding cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions.

Fortunately for her, most of the audiences seemed to care less about greenhouse gases and security umbrellas than about hearing dish from her about her life, her ambitions and, particularly, her relationship with Mr. Obama.

On the inevitable question of how she felt working for the man she had fought in the primary campaign, she said, "The president is the president; I tried to be the president and was not successful."

Nor did she bite at questions about whether she would ever run for the White House again. "That's not anything I'm at all thinking about," she said. Mrs. Clinton did offer some morsels about Mr. Obama's courtship of her to be the secretary. She said she resisted his initial job offer and gave him names of people she thought would be suitable candidates. Mr. Obama told her he needed her, however, and his persistence wore her down.

"He gave me an enormous amount of authority as secretary of state, and really everything I asked for so that I could the job that he wanted me to do,," she said, "and I was running out of excuses."




By Mark Landler, The New York Times, July 24, 2009

PHUKET, Thailand - The United States and North Korea fell into an acrimonious exchange on Thursday, with the North Korean government ridiculing Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as a "schoolgirl" and a "pensioner," two days after she referred to their leaders as "unruly children."

At a meeting of Southeast Asian nations here, the war of words competed for attention with Mrs. Clinton's campaign to marshal worldwide pressure on the North Koreans to dismantle their nuclear weapons program.

On Thursday, the Foreign Ministry in Pyongyang issued a statement criticizing remarks Mrs. Clinton had made earlier this week to ABC News, in which she said the best response to Pyongyang's behavior would be to ignore it, as one would a child clamoring for attention.

"We cannot but regard Mrs. Clinton as a funny lady as she likes to utter such rhetoric, unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community," the North Korean statement said. "Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping."

North Korea said it would defend its sovereignty against an America that it accuses of aiming nuclear weapons at it.

The ill-will surfaced vividly during a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, at this Thai resort, when the North Korean delegation turned up at a hotel podium to deliver a scheduled statement.

The officials were told that Mrs. Clinton was due to speak soon, though she was running late, as she has often this week.

After huddling, they stalked away and held a press conference nearby, at which they reiterated North Korea would never return to multiparty talks with South Korea, Japan, Russia, China, and the United States, aimed at curbing its nuclear ambitions.

For her part, Mrs. Clinton said she was encouraged by the international support for pressuring Pyongyang. Even Myanmar, she said, had responded to requests by China and other countries to track a North Korean freighter this month that American officials suspect was carrying illicit cargo.

"The international community's response to North Korea's actions has been unequivocal and nearly unanimous, leading to a new consensus," Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference, during which she read out a lengthy statement restating the American policy on North Korea.

She said there was a commitment to carry out the sanctions foreseen in a United Nations Security Council resolution adopted after Pyongyang's recent arms tests. Among its measures, the resolution bans weapons shipments to North Korea and seeks to squeeze the sources of financing for its nuclear and missile programs.

Mrs. Clinton singled out China, an influential neighbor, for asking officials in Myanmar to help in dealing with the North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam 1, which was steaming toward Myanmar. The vessel eventually turned around on is own and she called China's pressure a "proximate cause."

She said she would discuss further steps in pressing North Korea with senior Chinese officials during consultations with China next week in Washington. Mrs. Clinton is co-chairing the strategic and economic dialogue with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.

The United States has talked to China and other countries about a package of incentives, including economic and energy aid, which could be offered to North Korea in return for dismantling its nuclear program.

But even before Thursday's vitriolic statements from North Korea, American officials said they were more focused for now on inflicting pain on Pyongyang than on luring it back to the bargaining table.

"We are not interested in half measures," Mrs. Clinton said. "We have no desire to pursue protracted negotiations that will only lead us right back to where we have already been."

Mrs. Clinton said the Koreans had been intransigent in their public statements during the conference. Other senior American officials said the tone of the North's statements was openly hostile.

Still, Mrs. Clinton may have contributed to the chilly atmosphere in her remarks just before the meeting. "Maybe it's the mother in me," she said to ABC News, "the experience I've had with small children and teenagers and people who are demanding attention: Don't give it to them."





By Mark Landler, The New York Times, July 23, 2009

PHUKET, Thailand (AFP) - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Thursday hailed Pakistan's "courageous" progress against Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists after holding talks with the country's foreign minister.

Clinton, who met with Shah Mehmood Qureshi at a major Asian security forum in Thailand, also said Pakistan had made "impressive" progress in dealing with nearly two million people displaced by battles against the Taliban.

"We talked about the encouraging signs in Pakistan's fight against violent extremists," Clinton told reporters at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum in the Thai beach resort of Phuket.

Clinton said that there were "still great challenges ahead facing Pakistan including the ongoing threat of violent extremism and continued economic difficulties".

"But I assured the foreign minister that the United States stands ready to help the Pakistani government and people," she added.

Pakistani security forces in April launched an offensive in northwest districts after Taliban rebels advanced towards Islamabad, under heavy US pressure to counter militants threatening the existence of the state.

The clashes sparked a huge exodus as people rushed to escape the fighting.

Clinton told Qureshi that the "progress your government is making in this effort of a significant return of people back to their homes, because of the success of the government policy and military action, is impressive."

"The US has offered to continue to work with Pakistan in what ways Pakistan feels appropriate in a courageous struggle against violence and extremism," she told him, saying she looked forward to visiting the country later this year.

Qureshi told reporters he was "delighted" to meet with Clinton and said his country would continue to work closely with the US.

US envoy for the region Richard Holbrooke held talks Wednesday with Pakistani leaders in Islamabad who are concerned that a US offensive in neighbouring Afghanistan will further destabilise Pakistan.

Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani urged the US to share intelligence from spy flights and arm its soldiers against militants accused by Washington of plotting attacks from the Afghan border, his officials said.

Washington has put Pakistan at the heart of the fight against Al-Qaeda, and Obama has ordered an extra 21,000 troops to neighbouring Afghanistan in a bid to stabilise the country for elections as part of a sweeping new war plan.

AFP, July 23, 2009

PHUKET, Thailand (Reuters) - North Korea has no friends left to shield it from the international community's demands that the country scrap its nuclear activities, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday.

Clinton said many nations had told a low-level North Korean delegation at regional talks in Thailand that they were concerned by Pyongyang's recent "provocative" behavior, which has included nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

Speaking at a news conference, Clinton said North Korea's pursuit of its nuclear ambitions could provoke an arms race in North Asia, one of the world's most dynamic regions and responsible for a sixth of the global economy.

"Our partners in the region understand that a nuclear North Korea has far-reaching consequences for the security future of northeast Asia ... This would serve no nation's interests," she said on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) on the Thai resort island of Phuket.

"There is no place to go for North Korea, they have no friends left that will protect them from the international community's efforts to move toward denuclearization."

Clinton said the North Korean delegation gave no sign the country was interested in ending its nuclear program, which took center stage at Thursday's talks.

North Korea, bristling at being described by Clinton this week as behaving like an unruly child, responded in kind on Thursday, calling her vulgar and less than clever. The North's KCNA news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying her comments "suggests she is by no means intelligent".

"Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping," KCNA said.

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

Addressing foreign ministers and senior officials from Asia and Europe, Clinton said the United States would work through every avenue to persuade North Korea to eliminate its nuclear program and normalize relations with the world.

"The ASEAN Regional Forum can play an important role in achieving this outcome and for continuing to work vigorously to implement Resolution 1874," she said, referring to a U.N. Security Council measure agreed after North Korea's May 25 nuclear test.

She pointed to international cooperation in ensuring that a North Korean ship, tracked by the United States in June and July on suspicion of carrying banned arms, did not dock anywhere. It appeared headed toward Myanmar before turning around.

"The bottom line is this: If North Korea intends to engage in international commerce, its vessels must conform to the terms of 1874, or find no port," Clinton told the news conference.

Clinton said she was "gratified by Burma's willingness" to enforce the resolution to curb North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

On Wednesday she said the United States was worried about possible nuclear technology transfers from North Korea to Myanmar, also known as Burma. [ID:nSP134559]

Clinton gave Pyongyang a choice between more sanctions if it refuses to end its nuclear activities and benefits if it does.

"Full normalization of relations, a permanent peace regime, and significant energy and economic assistance are all possible in the context of full and verifiable denuclearization," she said.

Ri Heung-sik, director general of North Korea's Foreign Ministry, told reporters the incentives were "nonsense".

NO LUXURY BOATS FOR KIM

In one indication of how sanctions have begun to bite North Korea, The Financial Times reported on Thursday that Italy has blocked the sale of two luxury yachts to North Korea believed to be destined for leader Kim Jong-il.

The sale of luxury goods to North Korea is banned under previous U.N. resolutions.

China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said while U.N. Security Council resolutions against North Korea should be implemented, all sides should work to avoid an escalation of tensions.

A final communique from the ARF meeting was issued late on Thursday after disagreement with the North Korean delegation over the wording, Thai officials said.

The statement said ministers from several countries condemned the recent nuclear test and missile launches and urged full implementation of U.N. resolutions against North Korea. In the document, the North Koreans blamed Washington for the tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Many experts on North Korea have concluded from the reclusive state's belligerence that Pyongyang wants to be recognized as a nuclear weapons state and will not end its atomic activities.

By Martin Petty and Jack Kim, Reuters, July 23, 2009

PHUKET, Thailand - Faced with a fresh refusal by North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday the communist regime has "no friends left" to shield it from punishing U.N. penalties.

"North Korea's continued pursuit of its nuclear ambitions is sure to elevate tensions on the Korean peninsula and could provoke an arms race in the region," Clinton told a news conference after conferring with officials from 26 other countries and organizations. She cited near unanimity on fully enforcing the latest U.N. sanctions against North Korea for its repeated nuclear and missile tests.

Clinton said the U.S. will continue to insist that North Korea return to the bargaining table and verifiably dismantle its nuclear program. At the same time, she held out the prospect of restoring U.S. diplomatic ties to North Korea and other incentives - actions the Obama administration would be willing to consider only if the North Koreans take irreversible steps to denuclearize.

Just before she spoke, a North Korean official declared the six-party talks on denuclearizing North Korea over. And the North Korean Foreign Ministry ridiculed Clinton, saying in a statement that she has "made a spate of vulgar remarks" that "suggest that she is by no means intelligent."

Before departing for Washington after a weeklong trip to India and Thailand, Clinton offered a somewhat more optimistic message about another trouble spot on the U.S. foreign policy agenda: Myanmar, the military-run southeast Asian nation also known as Burma.

"There is a positive direction that we see with Burma," she said. She praised Myanmar's government for committing to enforce the U.N. sanctions against North Korea, calling it important in light of Myanmar's suspected secret military links to North Korea.

And she suggested Myanmar may have played a role this month in persuading a North Korean cargo ship suspected of carrying weaponry in violation of the sanctions to return home instead of continuing to its destination, which U.S. officials said was probably Myanmar.

Clinton also called on Myanmar to unconditionally release democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is accused of violating the terms of her house arrest.

On North Korea, Clinton stressed a point she has made repeatedly - that a fully nuclear North Korea might compel other countries in Asia to follow suit. She mentioned no names, but Japan and South Korea are thought to be among those that might go nuclear under circumstances in which they felt threatened by the North and less than fully confident of protection under a U.S. nuclear umbrella.

Clinton also said, "I wanted to make very clear that the United States does not seek any kind of offensive action against North Korea." She said a North Korean delegate at Thursday's meeting complained of being subjected to U.S. nuclear threats, but she said this showed a disconnect with reality, given that U.S. nuclear weapons were removed from South Korea nearly 20 years ago.

She said the world - including China, which has been North Korea's most loyal supporter - has made it clear to Pyongyang that it has "no place to go."

"They have no friends left that will protect them from the international community's efforts to move toward denuclearization," she said.

Just moments before she spoke at this southern Thai seaside resort, a spokesman for the North Korean delegation at the Phuket conference said his government will not return to six-party talks with the U.S., Japan, South Korea, China and Russia, citing the "deep-rooted anti-North Korean policy" of the United States.

"The six-party talks are over," Ri Hung Sik said.

The Phuket forum, known as the Asian Regional Forum and drawing senior officials from 27 nations, is one of the rare instances of U.S. and North Korean diplomats appearing together, although U.S. officials said there was no substantive contact. Clinton told the news conference she was disappointed in what she heard from the North Korean delegate who addressed the conference.

"The question is: Where do we go from here?" she asked.

Her reply, essentially, was that the U.S. and its negotiating partners will not back down from their insistence that North Korea not only resume negotiations but scrap its nuclear program in a verifiable way and return to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And she said the U.N. sanctions will be applied as strictly and fully as possible.

"The bottom line is this: If North Korea intends to engage in international commerce its vessels must conform to terms" of the U.N. sanctions, "or find no port," she said.

Clinton said the Obama administration would soon send Philip Goldberg, its coordinator for implementing the U.N. sanctions that were approved by the Security Council in June, back to Asia for a new round of consultations on enforcement.

And, in what she called an illustration of U.S. concern about the welfare of North Korea's people, Clinton said the administration intends to appoint a special envoy to focus on North Korean human rights.

North Korea's Foreign Ministry, still smarting from an earlier Clinton comment likening the regime to "small children" demanding attention, released a statement Thursday saying: "We cannot but regard Mrs. Clinton as a funny lady as she likes to utter such rhetoric, unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community. Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping."

Turning to another major security problem, Clinton held a one-on-one meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and said afterward that the Pakistani military's progress in fighting Taliban insurgents has been "encouraging" but incomplete.

By ROBERT BURNS, The Associated Press, July 23, 2009

PHUKET, Thailand - Stiffening the American line against Iran, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that the United States would consider extending a "defense umbrella" over the Middle East if the country continued to defy international demands that it halt work that could lead to nuclear weapons.

While such a defensive shield has long been assumed, administration officials in Washington acknowledged Wednesday that no senior official had ever publicly discussed it. Some of the officials said the timing of Mrs. Clinton's remarks reflected a growing sense that President Obama needed to signal to Tehran that its nuclear ambitions could be countered militarily, as well as diplomatically.

It also signified increasing concern in Washington that other Middle East states - notably Saudi Arabia and Egypt - might be tempted to pursue their own nuclear programs for fear Iran was growing closer to realizing its presumed nuclear ambitions.

Mrs. Clinton later clarified her comments on Iran, delivered in advance of a regional meeting here, saying her warning that the United States might create such an umbrella shield did not represent any backing away from the Obama administration's position that it must prevent Tehran from obtaining a bomb capability. But her words suggested that the administration was developing a strategy should all efforts at negotiation fail.

Her statement also came as Iran's internal divisions and crackdown on post-election protests have complicated Mr. Obama's pledge to "engage" Iran directly. Iranian officials have hinted that they will present new proposals on the nuclear program, and American officials have said their offers to negotiate stand.

Speaking during a televised town hall meeting in Bangkok, Mrs. Clinton said, "We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment, that if the U.S. extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to support the military capacity of those in the gulf, it's unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer, because they won't be able to intimidate and dominate, as they apparently believe they can, once they have a nuclear weapon."

Asked about Mrs. Clinton's comments, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the British ambassador to the United States, said, "I don't think it should be read as an acceptance of an Iranian nuclear weapon" but rather as a statement intended to "reassure our partners in the gulf."

A senior White House official said he believed that Mrs. Clinton was speaking for herself and that she was, as she insisted, restating existing policy.

Mrs. Clinton's invocation of a defense umbrella is reminiscent of the so-called nuclear umbrella that Washington extends to its Asian allies: implicitly, the promise of an American reprisal if they are attacked by nuclear weapons. But she did not use the term nuclear, and a senior State Department official cautioned that her remarks should not be interpreted to mean that.

After meeting the foreign ministers of China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, Mrs. Clinton also said that the United States would not offer new incentives to North Korea to return to negotiations. She said all of the other nations that had engaged in talks with North Korea in the past five years were united in demanding that North Korea undertake a "complete and irreversible denuclearization" before receiving any economic or political incentives from them.

She did not detail the steps that would be part of such a process, though she confirmed that they could include the disabling of the Yongbyon nuclear complex. Last year, North Korea began to dismantle that complex, where it runs a nuclear reactor and reprocess fuel rods to recover plutonium, but it vowed in June to restart production there.

The United States has had an uncharacteristically visible presence at this gathering of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean. It signed a friendship treaty with Asean's 10 members and called on one country, Myanmar, to release the imprisoned pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Israel's minister of intelligence and atomic energy, Dan Meridor, told Israeli Army radio: "I was not thrilled to hear the American statement from yesterday that they will protect their allies with a nuclear umbrella, as if they have already come to terms with a nuclear Iran. I think that's a mistake."

Mrs. Clinton said she was trying to make even starker the choice Iran faced if it did not agree to abandon its program.

The administration has talked about bolstering the military capacity of Iran's neighbors in the Persian Gulf so they could better meet the threat of a heavily armed Iran. It has also defended the proposed missile defense system in Eastern Europe as a potential shield against Iran.

"It faces the prospect, if it pursues nuclear weapons, of sparking an arms race in the region," Mrs. Clinton said. "That should affect the calculation of what Iran intends to do, and what it believes is in its national security interest."

On North Korea, Mrs. Clinton tried to project a united front, saying that China, Russia, Japan and South Korea had pledged to carry out the United Nations sanctions adopted in June against the North after its recent nuclear and missile tests.

Mrs. Clinton also reiterated concerns that North Korea might be transferring nuclear technology to Myanmar, which American officials refer to by its former name, Burma. She is to deliver a statement on North Korea on Thursday. In an excerpt provided to reporters, the tone remained unyielding, but the United States pledged to give North Korea "significant economic and energy assistance" if it undertook a verifiable denuclearization.

At the ministers meeting, Mrs. Clinton demanded that Myanmar release Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who could face years in prison on charges that she violated her house arrest. "It's so critical that she be released from this persecution that she has been under," she said later at a news conference. "If she were released, that would open up opportunities, at least for my country, to expand our relationship with Burma, including investments in Burma."

Mr. Obama extended a ban on American investments in Myanmar in May, but an official said the president could rescind it.

By Mark Landler and David E. Sanger, The New York Times, July 22, 2009

PHUKET, Thailand - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that the United States would consider extending a "defense umbrella" over the states in the Persian Gulf region if Iran does not bow to international demands to halt its nuclear program.

Her comment, delivered at a freewheeling town hall meeting in Bangkok, was both a warning to the Iranian government and a glimpse of how the Obama administration might cope with a nuclear-armed Iran, should Tehran continue with what Washington says is a sustained effort to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran insists that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only.

Mrs. Clinton later said that she was not articulating a new American policy toward Iran, merely demonstrating that Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon would not give it the safety and security it believes it would.

A defense umbrella in the Persian Gulf would move the United States closer to the explicit security guarantee that Washington gives allies in Asia, though that is a nuclear umbrella - a term Mrs. Clinton did not use Wednesday. She did talk about fortifying the military ability of Iran's neighbors.

"We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment that if the U.S. extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to support the military capacity of those in the Gulf," she said, "it's unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer, because they won't be able to intimidate and dominate, as they apparently believe they can, once they have a nuclear weapon."

In public, the Obama administration has said little, if anything, about extending a defense umbrella over the Middle East, though Dennis B. Ross, a senior White House adviser on Iran and the Gulf region, endorsed the concept of a "nuclear umbrella" prior to joining the administration.

During the presidential election campaign, Mrs. Clinton called for a security umbrella over Israel and other Middle East nations. Mr. Obama, while not ruling out any options, has not said whether he would approve the use of nuclear weapons against Iran if it attacked its neighbors.

A senior administration official also said Mrs. Clinton's remarks did not reflect a shift in the administration's policy of preventing Iran from obtaining a weapon.

"She is making an argument to Iran about why they should not do this," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because only Mrs. Clinton was authorized to speak publicly on such issues. Mrs. Clinton is in Thailand for a meeting here of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean.

Mrs. Clinton was also asked about reports that her visibility as secretary of state had waned in recent weeks. She made light of it, saying it was a misimpression left by the fact that she had broken her elbow and was forced to cancel two overseas trips, including one with Mr. Obama to Moscow.

"I'm not with the president on the trip and all of a sudden they go, 'Oh, where is she? She's gone, lost, disappeared,' " Mrs. Clinton said in mock horror, making light of news reports in the United States.

She also offered fresh details on Mr. Obama's political courtship of her in the days after the election to join his cabinet, saying she had first declined and given him names of people she thought would do a good job. Mrs. Clinton said the president, with repeated phone calls, wore down her resistance.

"He gave me an enormous amount of authority as secretary of state, and really everything I asked for so that could the job that he wanted me to do, that we agreed to," she said, "and I was running out of excuses." Earlier Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton intensified her warnings about reports of growing military cooperation between North Korea and Myanmar, citing the possible transfer of nuclear technology.

In remarks to reporters she said the United States was "very concerned about North Korea and recent reports" of possible nuclear deals with Myanmar. Military cooperation itself, she said, could destabilize the region.

Suspicions about North Korea's relationship with Myanmar, which the United States refers to as Burma, deepened recently when a North Korean freighter appeared to be steaming toward Myanmar. American officials, believing the ship might be carrying weapons or other illicit cargo, tracked it until it reversed course.





By Mark Landler, The New York Times, July 22, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. is concerned by reports of Myanmar and North Korea cooperating on nuclear technology, and called on Asian countries to present a "united front against that ever happening."

"We worry about the transfer of nuclear technology" and indications of clandestine military cooperation between two of Asia's most secretive regimes, Clinton said during a televised town hall in Bangkok before heading to the resort island of Phuket for a regional security gathering. "I'm not saying it is happening, but we want to be prepared to stand against it."

The U.S. and its Asian allies are on alert for suspected proliferation of conventional or nuclear materials by North Korea. The U.S. Navy recently followed the Kang Nam I, a North Korean freighter that was headed in the direction of Myanmar with unknown cargo. The ship turned around and returned home earlier this month.

Clinton also said during the town hall that the U.S. is prepared to take "crippling action" against Iran should it fail to curb its nuclear program, and is working with Middle East allies to boost their defenses.

Unanimous Resolution

The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously in June to adopt a U.S.-backed resolution to punish North Korea for its May 25 nuclear test. The measure seeks to curb loans and money transfers to North Korea and step up inspection of cargoes suspected of containing material that might contribute to the development of nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles.

Some proliferation experts and Myanmar dissidents say the country's military regime is trying to develop nuclear weapons, allegations that have gained currency with the release last month of 800 photographs of purported tunnels in the country built with North Korean assistance.

Clinton held back-to-back meetings in Phuket with foreign ministers from China, Russia, South Korea and Japan, the four other nations involved in stalled North Korean nuclear disarmament talks. The diplomats, meeting as part of a joint gathering of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Asean Regional Forum, agreed on the need to enforce the UN sanctions, she said.

'Full Implementation'

- All four of the other ministers agreed that full implementation is important to demonstrate unanimity and resolve in the face of North Korea's provocations.

Clinton called reports that the U.S. may be willing to offer North Korea a package of incentives to encourage its leaders to return to stalled talks about dismantling its own nuclear weapons program a "misinterpretation."

"The United States stands ready to work with North Korea if and only if and when they are ready to resume" talks about complete denuclearization, she said during the forum. "We do not intend to reward North Korea just for returning to the table," she added later.

Before diplomacy with North Korea foundered last year, the impoverished country was receiving economic aid in return for dismantling a plutonium-producing facility. The U.S. also held out the prospect of improved political ties if North Korea continued to take steps to end its nuclear work. The U.S. and North Korea have no formal diplomatic relations.

Asean Condemnation

Asean foreign ministers have condemned North Korea's nuclear test and urged the country to return to the six-party talks. The group has also said Myanmar should release Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, a call Clinton echoed.

Clinton said the U.S. expects fair treatment.

Clinton suggested today that incentives could be made available to Myanmar if the regime were to release Suu Kyi.

'Open Up Doors'

"There are a lot of opportunities that could be made available to the Burmese government and people if they did release her," she said. "It would open up doors for investment and exchanges that would help the people of Burma."

Any ability to influence the junta economically is likely to be limited given Myanmar's trade in natural gas with Thailand and China, a senior U.S. administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Myanmar, with Asia's seventh-largest natural gas reserves, has increased its foreign currency holdings four-fold since 2004 to $3.6 billion.

Clinton today also said Asean should consider expelling Myanmar if it doesn't make progress on human rights abuses.

"That would be an appropriate policy change to consider," she said.

By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Bloomberg, July 22, 2009

PHUKET (AFP) - United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Wednesday signed a landmark friendship pact with Southeast Asian nations.

The signing in the Thai island of Phuket, on the eve of Asia's biggest annual security forum, marked the US accession to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia.

By inking the pact, Clinton is sending a strong signal of Washington's desire to deepen ties and counter China's increasing influence, diplomats have said.

AFP, July 22, 2009

BANGKOK - The United States is expected to trumpet its comeback onto the Asian scene after years of neglect as a major security conference tackles the seemingly intractable issues of North Korea's nuclear threat and political repression in Myanmar.

Asia's "two devils" will hold center stage at the annual Asian Regional Forum that begins Wednesday amid hopes that a united front could be forged among enough of the 27 forum members to exert meaningful pressure on North Korea and Myanmar.

Terrorism may also feature, sparked by suicide bombings Friday at American-owned luxury hotels in Indonesia's capital Jakarta that left eight people dead and wounded more than 50 others. The bombings ended a four-year lull in attacks in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

"The presence of Asian countries, especially China, may help the U.S. communicate its concern more effectively to North Korea. Even if there is no breakthrough, this is a good opportunity to have a discussion that goes beyond condemnation," says Chaiwat Khamchoo, an international relations expert at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

The United States, represented by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, will join foreign ministers of Asian nations, plus Russia and the European Union. North Korea is sending a lower-level official to the meeting on the Thai resort island of Phuket.

Security also looms as a concern at the conference itself and an anxious Thai government has dispatched some 10,000 security forces to Phuket to insure that the upcoming international conference is not disrupted.

An Asian summit in April at the Thai seaside resort of Pattaya was shut down when protesters seeking the ouster of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's government overran the hotel where the meeting was taking place. Regional leaders and delegates fled the venue by helicopter and speedboat.

The 15-year-old forum is likely to see declarations of stepped-up U.S. involvement in Asia. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Scot Marciel recently told reporters in Washington that Clinton would stress how focused the U.S. administration is on improving its relationship with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. ASEAN foreign ministers are holding a two-day meeting this weekend before the forum begins.

"We have started by reinvigorating our bedrock alliances, which did fray in recent years," she said in a recent speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. "We are both a trans-Atlantic and a trans-Pacific nation."

She cited strengthening bilateral relations with Japan, Korea, Thailand and the Philippines, as well as trans-Pacific institutions. She is in India prior to the Thailand conference.

The Thai hosts say Clinton will probably sign ASEAN's seminal Treaty of Amity and Cooperation to which more than a dozen countries outside the bloc have already acceded.

"The U.S.'s love for the region was lost during the Bush administration. But it is not the case now that President (Barack) Obama is in power. Therefore, more active engagement with the region is anticipated," says Pavin Chachavalpongpun a political scientist at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state under President George W. Bush, skipped the forum twice in three years, and did not show up at several major ASEAN conferences.

Such renewed engagement, Pavin says, would not only prove useful as a strategy "against the two regional devils - Myanmar and North Korea - but would be good for the U.S. in the long run as it seeks to counter the growing military strength of China."

Marciel would not rule out the possibility of talks with the North Koreans at Phuket, "but at this point, there's nothing set." More likely, he said, would be bilateral meetings with China, South Korea, Russia and Japan - the other participants in stalled talks with Pyongyang aimed at ending its nuclear program.

Coming after a failed mission to Myanmar by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the conference is unlikely to budge the impoverished country's junta from pursuing the trial of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi or releasing some 2,100 other political prisoners.

But the region could move closer to a consensus on Myanmar, also known as Burma.

ASEAN, which includes Myanmar, has recently issued some sharp criticism in sharp contrast to its earlier soft-pedaling, and even China, Myanmar's closest ally, has backed the U.N.'s call for Suu Kyi's release.

The U.S. delegation at the forum may well seek counsel from Asian countries as the Obama administration pursues a review of its Myanmar policy which began in February.

Clinton and other top Obama officials have indicated that past U.S. Myanmar policy, grounded in tough economic sanctions, has not yielded results in easing the military's iron-fisted rule.

Irrespective of what is voiced at Phuket, Suu Kyi is likely to be found guilty for violating the terms of her house arrest by harboring an uninvited American man who entered her residence. The Noble Peace Prize laureate faces up to five years in prison.

By DENIS D. GRAY, The Associated Press, July 18, 2009

MUMBAI - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday paid tribute to the victims of last year's Mumbai attacks, meeting those who escaped the carnage and calling for worldwide unity against terror.

Clinton, on her first visit to India as Washington's top diplomat, began the first full day with a commemoration at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel, where she is staying and where 31 guests and staff died during a 60-hour siege.

In a private meeting, she met 13 members of staff from the Taj and the nearby Trident-Oberoi hotels, which was also stormed by Islamist militants on November 26.

The employees included Taj general manager Karambir Kang, whose wife and two sons died in the attack. Despite losing his family, he continued to work and direct rescue operations.

She later told a news conference she was "deeply touched" at meeting the staff, whom she said "deserve our gratitude".

"As events of 26/11 unfolded, the US stood with Indians, as Indians stood with America after September 11. These events are seared in our collective memories," she said.

US officials said Clinton was in sombre mood and spent about five minutes writing a message in a memorial book and reading other tributes at the landmark, waterfront hotel.

She wrote: "Americans share a solidarity with this city and nation. Both our people have experienced the senseless and searing effects of violent extremism.

"And both can be grateful and proud of the heroism of brave men and women whose courage saved lives and prevented greater harm on 26/11 and 9/11.

"Now it is up to all nations and people who seek peace and progress to work together. Let us rid the world of hatred and extremism that produces such nihilistic violence.

"Our future deserves no less. With profound sympathy and resolve. Hillary Rodham Clinton."

A total of 166 people died and more than 300 others were injured in the November 26-29 attacks, which saw 10 heavily-armed gunmen target luxury hotels, the city's main railway station, a popular restaurant and Jewish centre.

AFP, July 17, 2009

Clarity on U.S. Stance Toward Burma Was Expected at Regional Meeting

MUMBAI, July 17 -- Nearly six months after announcing a high-profile review of U.S. policy to Burma during a trip to Indonesia, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is returning to Asia without a new policy.

Clinton will attend a gathering of Southeast Asian foreign ministers in Phuket, Thailand, including the Burmese foreign minister, and many experts had expected the Obama administration to make clear its intentions at the gathering. But U.S. officials said the review was put on hold pending the outcome of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's trial that began in May -- and the military junta that rules Burma has repeatedly delayed the court proceedings, apparently with an aim of pushing it past the annual gathering of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

U.S. officials are holding out hope that the court will release Suu Kyi, opening up the possibility of dialogue. But the result has been that the United States has been largely silent on Burma, even as the government launched a military offensive against the Karen ethnic group that has spilled over the border into neighboring Thailand, with thousands of refugees fleeing the fighting as an estimated 3,300 villages were burned.

Clinton arrived here Friday on the first leg of a week-long tour of India and Thailand but did not talk to reporters during her 16-hour journey. She will attend the ASEAN meetings on Wednesday and Thursday.

Burma, also known as Myanmar, is regarded as one of the world's most oppressive nations, run by generals who have enriched themselves while much of the country remains desperately poor. The National League for Democracy, Suu Kyi's party, won a landslide electoral victory in 1990, but the military leadership refused to accept it. Since then, she has been under house arrest for most of the time, as have hundreds of her supporters.

Sean Turnell, an associate professor at Macquarie University in Australia and a specialist on Burma's economy, estimates that the government has reserves of about $5 billion, largely from natural gas fields that bring in about $2 billion a year.

"The financial position of the regime is very strong," he said, even as it has pleaded poverty with international donors. "It is extraordinary they are allowed to get away with it."

In May, just days before Suu Kyi's six-year term under house arrest was due to expire, the government put her on trial for an incident involving a U.S. citizen who swam across Rangoon's picturesque Lake Inya to reach Suu Kyi's lakefront bungalow and allegedly stayed there one or two nights. Suu Kyi was taken to Rangoon's notorious Insein Prison on charges of violating the terms of her detention by hosting a foreigner, which could bring a three- to five-year prison term, according to Burmese opposition officials. Suu Kyi, 63, is said to be in poor health and has recently been treated for dehydration and low blood pressure.

When U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited Burma this month, the government rejected his request to meet with Suu Kyi.

Indeed, few experts think the junta will show leniency toward Suu Kyi as it is preparing for elections in 2010 to solidify its rule. The government had revived a lawsuit seeking to take away her home at the time the American intruder presented another opportunity to put her in jail. Before the new charges were lodged, the National League for Democracy had issued a statement saying it would consider participating in the election but only if Suu Kyi was freed, the constitution was amended and the elections were free and fair.

When Clinton announced the policy review in February, she indicated that she thought years of tough sanctions on Burma had failed to have an impact. "Clearly, the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn't influenced the Burmese junta," she said during a news conference in Jakarta during her first overseas trip as secretary of state, adding that the route taken by Burma's neighbors of "reaching out and trying to engage them has not influenced them, either."

But U.S. officials say the emerging policy review does not envision major changes in the U.S. approach, though it had not yet been reviewed by senior officials when Suu Kyi's trial began. Under the new policy, meetings would have been authorized between Burmese and U.S. officials at the deputy assistant secretary of state level, but sanctions would have been maintained and humanitarian assistance would continue.

"The outcome of the trial will affect the policy review," said a senior administration official speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing internal deliberations. "The Burmese have indicated some interest in improving relations with us. If the outcome is bad, it makes it harder."

With the policy review uncompleted and U.S. attention focused mostly on Suu Kyi, diplomatic activity has continued without the forceful intervention of the United States. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for new financial sanctions against Burma and the European Union issued a tough statement calling for Burma to halt the military offensive against the Karen.

At the United Nations, the U.S. focus on Suu Kyi's trial -- and failure to speak out against the military offensive when it started -- has played into the hands of Russia and China, which have long bridled at the Bush administration's success in getting Burma on the Security Council agenda. Chinese ambassador Liu Zhenmin said that the Security Council cannot be about one individual, no matter how iconic. "The situation in Myanmar poses no threat to international or regional peace or security," he said, referring to the key factors that put a country on the Security Council docket.

Scot Marciel, deputy assistant secretary of state for Asia, rejected the idea that the administration has been hampered by the uncompleted review. "We're not left empty-handed or frozen, if you will, by the fact that the review is not completed," he said. "We have been extremely active diplomatically on Burma policy."

But Michael Green, top Asia adviser in the George W. Bush White House, said the Obama administration "is stuck in a sense" because it has so hinged the policy review on Suu Kyi's trial. Green said Southeast Asia is waiting for an answer from Clinton because her comments in Jakarta left the impression that the United States might lift sanctions. "She is going to have to lay down some clear signals and clear principles" in Thailand, he said.

By Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post, July 18, 2009

BANGKOK - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that the Obama administration is concerned by the possibility that North Korea, with a history of illicit sales of missiles and nuclear technology, is developing military ties to Myanmar.

She did not refer explicitly to a nuclear connection but made clear that the matter is disconcerting.

"We know there are also growing concerns about military cooperation between North Korea and Burma which we take very seriously," she said when asked about it at a news conference in the Thai capital. Myanmar, also known as Burma, is run by a military regime.

"It would be destabilizing for the region, it would pose a direct threat to Burma's neighbors," she said, adding that as a treaty ally of Thailand, the United States takes the matter seriously.

Later, a senior administration official said that Washington is concerned about the possibility that North Korea could be cooperating with Myanmar on a nuclear weapons program, but he added that U.S. intelligence information on this is incomplete. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the matter.

Another administration official, speaking under the same ground rules, said one reason for concern on the nuclear front is the evidence that North Korea helped Syria clandestinely build a nuclear reactor, which was destroyed in an airstrike in 2007 by the Israeli air force.

The United States, in a joint effort with South Korea, Japan, China and Russia, is attempting to use U.N. sanctions as leverage to compel North Korea to return to the negotiating table over its nuclear program. A major element of the international concern about North Korea is the prospect of its nuclear proliferation, which could lead to a nuclear arms race in Asia and beyond.

At the news conference, Clinton held out the possibility of enticing North Korea back to negotiations on reversing its nuclear program.

"We think that there is a different path for North Korea to follow, that there is an opportunity which is theirs for the taking, but they have to be willing to change their behavior and agree to de-nuclearize North Korea, which would mean that the entire Korean peninsula is denuclearized, and we stand ready to respond if we get any signal that there would be a serious commitment to doing that," she said.

The senior administration official said the U.S. has not yet received any such signal from Pyongyang. For now, he added, the focus of the administration's effort is on persuading other countries to vigorously enforce a new set of U.N. sanctions against North Korea following its latest missile tests. In order to get as many countries as possible to join the enforcement effort, the administration believes it needs to publicly hold out the possibility of a new set of incentives for North Korea in the event it agrees to nuclear talks.

Clinton spoke to reporters after meeting with Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva at the outset of a three-day visit to Thailand. She is scheduled to fly to the Thai seaside resort of Phuket on Wednesday to attend an international meeting on Asian security. Myanmar and North Korea are expected to have representatives there, but Clinton has no plans to meet with them, officials said.

The senior administration official held out the possibility that a member of Clinton's staff might have contacts with representatives of Myanmar or North Korea during the Phuket conference. The U.S. has diplomatic relations with Myanmar but not with North Korea.

Clinton said she would, as previously announced, sign ASEAN's seminal Treaty of Amity and Cooperation to which more than a dozen countries outside the 10-nation bloc have already acceded. The U.S. signing will be done on the executive authority of President Barack Obama and does not require congressional ratification, the senior administration official said. The administration of President George W. Bush declined to sign the document; Obama sees it as a symbolic underscoring of the U.S. commitment to Asia.

Clinton sharply criticized the military rulers of Myanmar for human rights abuses, "particularly violent actions that are attributed to the Burmese military concerning the mistreatment and abuse of young girls." She said an Obama administration policy review on Myanmar is on hold pending the outcome of the trial of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is accused of violating the terms of her house arrest. The Noble Peace Prize laureate faces up to five years in prison if convicted, as expected.

"Our position is that we are willing to have a more productive partnership with Burma if they take steps that are self-evident: end the violence against their own people including the minorities that they have been focused on in the last months, end the mistreatment of Aung San Suu Kyi and the political prisoners in detention who have been rounded up by the government and other steps that Burma knows it could take," she said.

By ROBERT BURNS, The Associated Press, July 21, 2009

NEW DELHI - U.S. officials "firmly believe" that al-Qaida leaders who planned and carried out the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are hiding in Pakistan near its border with Afghanistan, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday.

At a news conference concluding three days of meetings, Clinton said Washington has told the Pakistani government what it believes about the location of al-Qaida leaders on its soil.

"With respect to the location of those who were part of the planning and execution of the attack of 9/11 against our country, we firmly believe that a significant number of them are in the border area of Pakistan," she said when asked about the U.S. view.

"We are actively looking for additional information that would lead us to them," she added.

The Pakistani government denies that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his senior lieutenants are hiding on its territory.

Bin Laden is believed to have fled into Pakistan from Afghanistan weeks after the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks.

The Associated Press, July 20, 2009

NEW DELHI - With both poetry and prose, the United States pledged Monday to embark on a new era of deeper relations with India - a partnership of what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton likes to call the world's largest democracy and its oldest continuously functioning one.

As Mrs. Clinton conjured up a soaring vision of friendship between the two countries in a speech to a university audience here, the Obama administration signed off on a nuts-and-bolts technical agreement that will open the door to lucrative military sales by the United States to India. In addition, India said it had designated two sites where American companies would build nuclear power plants.

"We will work not just to maintain our good relationship, but to broaden and deepen it," Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference with the Indian minister for external affairs, S. M. Krishna.

Earlier in the day, at the University of Delhi, she leaned heavily on her personal experiences of India to argue that the countries needed to draw more heavily on the vast web of personal connections between India and the United States, home to nearly three million Indian immigrants.

The United States and India inaugurated a strategic dialogue, spanning issues from education to climate change, and drawing in participants from the business world and academia, as well as the government.

"What I see today is thrilling to me," Mrs. Clinton said, "and what I hope is that the partnership that we are developing together will truly change the future for all of the children in both of our countries."

The United States generally reserves strategic dialogues for major countries like China, so this is a symbolic acknowledgment of India's rising role in the world. Mr. Krishna said the dialogue would set a "new agenda for India 3.0" - an allusion to India's high-tech prowess.

Behind the high-flown talk are some obvious economic considerations: the United States won India's agreement to allow it to monitor the "end use" of military equipment and technology sold to India, to ensure it is not diverted to other uses or sold to other countries. The provision would pave the way for a proposed sale of 126 advanced fighter jets to India.

India also confirmed the two sites, in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh States, for nuclear power plants to be supplied by American companies. The contracts, worth billions of dollars, are a key benefit of a civilian nuclear deal with India signed in the last days of the Bush administration.

The American companies, however, will not sign contracts until India agrees to shield them from liability above $450 million in the event of catastrophic nuclear accident. Indian officials told Mrs. Clinton they would press for the protection in the next legislative session.

On this trip, the first by a top official of the Obama administration, Mrs. Clinton's itinerary spoke as vividly as her words to the changing nature of the relationship. She did not meet Mr. Krishna or Prime Minister Manmohan Singh until Monday, three days after she arrived in Mumbai.

Her schedule has been packed with meeting with Indian business tycoons, a film star, agricultural experts, university students and rural women who work in cottage industries like textiles.

The message, she told a crowd of 700 on Monday, was that "we need not only the professional diplomats who serve in our foreign services and represent our countries to one another. We need the citizen diplomats."

Mrs. Clinton deployed the full power of her celebrity - regaling the audience with stories about her unsuccessful run for the presidency, her husband, her relationship with President Obama and even her appetite for Indian food.

"I eat way too much of the food at every chance I get," she said. "I have to go on a diet when I get back home, back to carrots and celery."

A young female student asked Mrs. Clinton to compare the status of women across countries, noting that India had its first female leader within three decades of its independence while - "if I may say so," she said gingerly - the United States has not yet elected a woman president.

"You can say so to me," Mrs. Clinton replied in a sardonic tone that cracked up the crowd.

Clinton Criticizes North Korea

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said North Korea should not receive the attention it has been seeking through missile tests and other provocative acts, and she compared the nation's behavior to that of unruly children.

North Korea tested a nuclear device in May and fired seven ballistic missiles earlier this month in defiance of a United Nations resolution.

"Maybe it's the mother in me or the experience that I've had with small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention - don't give it to them, they don't deserve it, they are acting out," Mrs. Clinton said in an interview broadcast Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America."




By Mark Landler, The New York Times, July 20, 2009

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Hillary Clinton is almost debt-free from her failed bid for the presidency.

Exactly one year after announcing it was a staggering $25.2 million in debt, her campaign reported Wednesday carrying its smallest amount of unpaid campaign bills since the former New York senator and current U.S. Secretary of State first began her presidential bid in early 2007.

As of June 30, Clinton's campaign organization owed $1.5 million in unpaid bills and had $2.5 million in the bank, according to a new disclosure report filed with the Federal Election Commission. Previously, the smallest amount of debt the campaign had reported was $1.6 million in March 2007, roughly two months after Clinton launched her presidential bid. As the race for the Democratic nomination grew more competitive, the campaign's debt grew steadily and reached its peak on June 30, 2008, just three weeks after Clinton suspended her campaign.

At that point, Clinton's campaign owed $12 million to almost 500 individual creditors and an additional $13.2 million to the candidate herself, who used her own money to help keep her operation afloat. Campaign finance laws forced Clinton to forgive the amount she loaned her committee because she was not able to repay the funds by the required deadline.

Wednesday's filing showed that the campaign now owes $1.5 million to one remaining creditor, Penn, Schoen & Berland, the political consulting firm that advised Clinton during the campaign. The firm's president, Mark Penn, had also served as Clinton's senior campaign strategist. At the start of 2009, the firm had been owed $5.4 million.

Clinton's campaign repaid Penn's firm about $808,000 since the end of May, almost all of it on June 29, the day before the end of the most recent reporting period. The bulk of this amount, $725,000, had been for "mail expenses," while $68,000 was for "web site" expenses, and another $15,000 was for various advertisements.

The campaign raised $541,000 in contributions from April through June and generated an additional $403,000 from both bank interest and from the rental of its campaign mailing lists to other organizations. Those organizations include the national Democratic party's Senate campaign arm, which paid $41,000, and the campaigns of Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Chris Dodd of Connecticut, both of whom are up for re-election in 2010.

Two non-profit groups headed by people close to the former senator also rented the list: the "NoLimits Foundation," a policy and issue education organization headed by long-time Clinton adviser Ann Lewis, and the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, created by the former president. Lewis' organization paid the Clinton campaign $200,000, while the former president's foundation paid $75,000. So far this year, President Clinton's foundation has paid Hillary Clinton's campaign a total of $349,000 in list rental fees.

A federal law known as the "Hatch Act" prohibits Clinton, as the secretary of state, from personally soliciting or accepting political contributions. The law does allow others to raise funds on Clinton's behalf, without her direct involvement.

Since ending her campaign, Clinton has received fundraising help from an all-star line-up of notable Democrats, including President Barack Obama, the man who defeated her for the Democratic nomination, Vice President Joe Biden, and family members such as President Clinton, her daughter, Chelsea, and her mother, Dorothy Rodham.

By Robert Yoon, CNN, July 16, 2009

WASHINGTON - India may make two announcements next week paving the way for more than $20 billion in contracts for U.S. companies building nuclear-power plants and selling defense technology, said Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hopes to unveil the agreements that would help American firms sell sophisticated arms and nuclear power plants to India when she visits next week.

One would be an "end-use monitoring" agreement under which the United States would have the right to make sure American arms sold to India are used for their intended purpose and that the technology does not leak to third countries. Under U.S. law, such a pact is necessary for U.S. firms to bid on India's plan to buy 126 multirole fighters, one of the largest arms deals in the world and a potential boon to Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co.

"We hope to be able to sign that," Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake said, previewing Clinton's trip to India. She arrives in Mumbai on Friday for a two-night visit and then goes to New Delhi for Monday talks.

The visit is Clinton's first to India as secretary of state. Congress last year gave final approval to a pact opening the Indian market to U.S. nuclear power companies.




Reuters, July 15, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton erased most of her presidential campaign debt, new Federal Election Commission records show. The last outstanding bill was $1.5 million to former chief strategist Mark Penn.

Clinton's campaign raised $541,276 in donations between April 1 and June 30, including $5,000 from the political action committee of New York-based New York Life Insurance Co., FEC records show. She had $2.5 million in the bank at the end of June, more than enough to pay off the remaining debt to Penn's firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, owned by London-based WPP Plc.

Penn's handling of the campaign and potential conflicts with his business drew criticism, and he gave up his political role in April 2008.

Clinton's campaign also earned $403,239 renting out its list of supporters. Those paying for the names included the foundation founded by her husband, former President Bill Clinton; Senate Democrats Barbara Boxer of California and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut; the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; and Representatives Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania and Jerrold Nadler of New York.

Clinton earlier wrote off a $13.2 million personal loan she made to her presidential campaign.

By Jonathan D. Salant, Bloomberg, July 16, 2009

MEXICO CITY - Mexico on Thursday quadrupled the number of federal police in a gang-plagued western state following a cartel's slaying of 20 officers and troops in one of the boldest revenge attacks ever mounted against the government.

Amid the violence, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton indicated Thursday that the United States is committed to the so-called Merida Initiative, a $1.4 billion funding package aimed at helping Mexico to train and equip its anti-drug efforts.

Mexico could certainly use it: The government deployed 1,000 more federal police to Michoacan, home base for La Familia cartel, bringing the total to 1,300, Public Safety Department spokeswoman Veronica Penunuri said. They will be backed by at least three Black Hawk helicopters and three armored vehicles.

Last weekend's attacks by La Familia drug cartel were a blatant challenge to President Felipe Calderon, who has deployed about 45,000 soldiers and tens of thousands of federal police across the country in an attempt to halt the escalating drug trade.

Such measures have raised the concerns of human rights organizations, which have alleged cases of abuse by authorities.

Asked whether that could hurt future U.S. aid to Mexico's drug-fighting efforts, Clinton replied, "What we see here is an administration under President Calderon locked in a very difficult battle with the most ruthless drug traffickers and criminal cartels anywhere on the planet."

"We have worked very closely with his administration to provide additional support for police training and it is our assessment that the steps taken and the commitment demonstrated by the Calderon administration is deserving of confidence."

Clinton appeared at a joint news conference in Washington with Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa.

La Familia cartel launched its coordinated offensive in Michoacan and two neighboring states on Saturday within minutes of the arrest of its reputed operations chief, Arnoldo Rueda. In the worst attack, 12 federal agents were killed execution-style, their tortured bodies piled along a roadside as a warning for all to see. Six federal police and two soldiers were killed in the other attacks.

Calderon insists the backlash from the cartel in response to Rueda's capture proves the drug gang has been weakened, but government critics said it revealed how vulnerable federal forces are to heavily armed crime organizations with intelligence networks within the police.

The buildup in Michoacan is already drawing troops away from other drug-violence hotspots. Nearly 2,000 federal police currently stationed in the drug-plagued northern border city of Ciudad Juarez will be sent south to help combat La Familia, local officials said Thursday.

On Wednesday, a man claiming to be La Familia leader Servando "La Tuta" Gomez called the CB Television station in Michoacan to offer a pact with the government. The man said the gang's wave of attacks are only a response to police action against cartel members' family and friends.

Officials have named Gomez as the cartel leader who ordered the weekend attacks, and federal prosecutors have offered a reward of more than $2 million for information that leads to his capture. Authorities say Gomez assumed operational control of La Familia after Rueda Medina's arrest.

Federal officials said Wednesday that they were trying to confirm whether the caller was indeed Gomez, but Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont noted that regardless, the "federal government does not ever dialogue, does not negotiate, does not reach deals with any criminal organization,"

The caller claiming to be "La Tuta" issued a rambling defense of La Familia's actions, saying federal police and prosecutors "come and fabricate guilty charges."

"They are targeting innocent people in Michoacan state," he said.

Federal police have arrested and charged eight mayors in Michoacan for aiding the cartel, and have also have arrested leading drug traffickers at events including baptism parties for relatives. But Gomez Mont denied that traffickers' families were being targeted.

The weekend attacks spread quickly to at least 10 cities, including towns in Michoacan's neighboring states of Guerrero and Guanajuato. Officers' hotels were shot up and grenades were tossed at police posts.

In Guerrero, La Familia gunmen shot and killed a federal police chief Tuesday. On Wednesday, authorities detained four suspected in the killing, including Francisco Sotelo, the 18-year-old nephew of "La Tuta," state prosecutor Carlos Zamarripa said.

Federal prosecutors also announced Thursday the arrest of a retired army captain suspected of selling government weapons to the Beltran Leyva drug cartel. It is the first suspected case of weapons sales between the army and a drug cartel, according to a statement from the Attorney General's Office.

Mateo Juarez, a retired first captain, is also suspected of training soldiers to become hit men or bodyguards for the cartel, the statement said. Juarez was arrested July 14 during "Operation Clean House," an investigation that began in 2008 after reports that drug cartels had infiltrated security forces and prosecutors' offices.

The drug war has left more than 11,000 people dead since Calderon took office in 2006.

By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO, The Associated Press, July 17, 2009

Clinton's second trip to Asia will be trickier than her first as the US looks for friends in a region where China looms large

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, is travelling to Asia again to meet foreign ministers at the Asean regional forum, and to visit India. On her first Asian trip in February, she provided a welcome contrast to the past with her openness to others' views, her willingness to co-operate, and her star power. She made Asians look at America anew.

But this trip will be trickier. One challenge is that part of the plot for the US and Clinton is being written by others. North Korea will be on the agenda after its missile tests, as will Myanmar, since its generals persist in prosecuting Aung San Suu Kyi, the world's most famous political detainee, on trivial charges.

After all that has happened in recent weeks, the definition of "success" must be set low. Nothing positive will come from the US condemning these two difficult regimes unilaterally. So a key goal of Clinton's visit must be to pull together with the Asian leaders present at the Asean regional forum.

As for Myanmar, its neighbours and fellow Asean members - Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand - are also concerned about Suu Kyi's continued prosecution. The US should begin to work with these countries not only on this matter, but also on the elections that Burma military junta has promised for 2010. Together, they should press for assurances of a free and fair process, with the aim of avoiding the kind of mess that followed the Iranian elections.

Indonesia can be one ally. After decades of autocracy, this vast archipelago of a country just concluded a presidential election that has solidified its transition to democracy. India, proud of its long-standing democracy and fresh from its own elections, shares a border with Myanmar and can also assist efforts there.

The approach to North Korea is similar. Kim Jong-il is a naughty boy who wants attention and incentives to behave decently. Rather than debate with her counterparts, Clinton needs to ensure that other countries in the six-party framework, especially China and South Korea, are on the same page as the US.

On both issues, there is little capacity to exert force or sufficient pressure for solutions any time soon. So diplomatic efforts must instead aim to join Americans and like-minded Asians in common cause, to push for steps forward in the medium to longer term. Others must be brought on board, especially the regional forum hosts, Asean and Thailand. A moral community should form in Asia, one that displaces its leaders' usual cynical calculations of power in order to jump on the right bandwagon.

In all this, China is the 800-pound dragon in the room. China is already closer to Asean and a key player with respect to Myanmar, North Korea, and other sticky issues. A "bamboo" economic zone appears to be emerging, perhaps to replace today's weakening US-centric trans-Pacific ties.

This is the context for Clinton's visit to India as well. George W Bush's administration should be credited for giving overdue recognition to India, but this was done primarily on a bilateral basis. The US should now leverage that relationship to work on regional and even global issues.

Besides her own work, Clinton is likely to also be inundated during this visit with requests concerning President Barack Obama. There is still no confirmation about when Obama will visit Asia, though many expect that he will attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, to be held in Singapore in November.

China, Japan, and Indonesia must be among Obama's priorities, but many others will clamour for him to visit their capitals. Clinton and the US administration would do well to decide which requests are merely photo opportunities and confine these to meetings at the sidelines of Apec. The US should insist on a substantive agenda as a precondition for any Obama visit. In China, for example, Clinton successfully established an agenda for the two countries to work together on climate change. Plans and resources must now be prepared.

Clinton has reopened the doors for Obama in Asia with charm and confidence. Obama will eventually come to Asia with many high expectations and star billing. While his charisma and openness to dialogue will be sought after, substance will also be measured and much needed. By November, after all, it will be more than a year since the global crisis began in the US, and Obama and his team must show tangible prospects for recovery. American leadership - globally and in Asia - can no longer be presumed. It must be earned.

By Simon Tay, The Guardian, July 17, 2009

Secretary of State Clinton departed Thursday for her first trip abroad since falling and breaking her elbow last month. The injury caused her to miss President Obama's recent overseas trip as well as one of her own, which did little to quell recent speculation that she has lost the foreign policy limelight in an administration chock-full of international relations heavyweights.

Clinton appeared without a sling for the first time earlier this week, though she still shook hands with her uninjured left hand and continues physical training several times a week.

On Thursday, she struck back at those who say she has been sidelined from the administration's foreign policy after she lost battles to choose some ambassadors and staff.

"I broke my elbow, not my larynx," Clinton said. "I have been consistently involved in the shaping and implementation of our foreign policy, and I am off to India and Thailand."

On Friday, Clinton will arrive in Mumbai where a deadly and destructive terror atttack occurred last November.

She'll then move on to New Delhi, where she'll engage her counterparts. Matters of recent contention will be discussed including climate change, trade and nonproliferation.

She'll then travel to regional meetings in Thailand, where North Korea and Burma will be hot topics.

By Kirit Radia, ABC News, July 16, 2009

I had a quick audience with Hillary Clinton before she left on a week-long trip to India and Thailand this afternoon. I asked the U.S. secretary of state about chatter -- which she addressed in straightforward terms -- that she had been overshadowed in the early months of the Obama administration and that high-profile envoys had taken the lead on some of the most pressing foreign-policy challenges facing the United States, from a stagnant Middle East peace process to growing militancy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, leaving her with a perhaps less exciting portfolio.

The conversation came a day after her first major foreign-policy speech as secretary of state at the Council on Foreign Relations, and amid concerted efforts to boost her profile, in particular since she broke her elbow and required surgery last month.

Clinton, dressed in a cream-colored pantsuit and no longer wearing an arm sling, seemed perplexed by the idea that she might feel insecure about ceding turf to the envoys, given, she said, that she had been instrumental in getting them appointed and that they report to both her and the president (she also noted that she consults actively with them). "I am really not," insecure about that, she said emphatically.

"Given all the new administration inherited, the demoralization, the steady demands of the job, there's so much to take on at once," Clinton said, explaining that being the secretary of state requires a great deal of multitasking, whether it's teleconferencing with ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill, reviewing a George Mitchell memo, communicating with Congress, or meeting with ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, and a longer list she ticked off. It would have been "irresponsible," she said, to try to micromanage everything, with all the foreign-policy challenges and priorities that she, at any moment, as a top cabinet official, is working with President Obama to articulate.

"I'm comfortable delegating," Clinton said. She described the job as immensely challenging and rewarding. "It's so substantive, it's so demanding."

Asked about the personal toll of having to be "on" -- on message, on top of the issues -- all the time, Clinton called herself, as she has in the past, "more of a work horse than a show horse." Acknowledging that the job required its share of the latter, such as press conferences and public appearances, she said she nonetheless has to be "focused and rooted in the work."

Had she deliberately spent her early months as secretary trying to build rapport with the other principals and overcome any legacy of mistrust from the primary campaign, before moving to raise her profile as the nation's top diplomat, as she aimed to do with Wednesday's speech?

"There's no other approach that would have worked," Clinton said. "I am [directly] responsible for 50,000 people," she noted, referring to the approximate size of the State Department's workforce. "When I have gotten into a new job, from senator to first lady to secretary of state to lawyer," she explained, it's been important to get acclimated, do the homework, and build relationships.

She rejected, however, the suggestion that she wasn't dominating her turf even before she broke her elbow last month. "We had moved at breakneck speed," Clinton said. "I traveled extensively, dealt with important things that matter, went to Congress. I see the president and am at the White House frequently."

What legacy does she want to leave from her tenure as secretary of state? "It's too early," Clinton protested, shaking her head. One goal, she said, is to build up State's resources and personnel so that the department, diplomacy, and foreign assistance can be more effective tools of statecraft -- longer-term work that competes for her time with the more urgent challenges of the day.

What goes through her mind as she is falling asleep? A stream of intelligence reports that make her think about allocating resources to different problems, she said.

And then she was off to do an interview with a Pakistani television correspondent, who was concerned about what she might be ready to offer tomorrow in New Delhi. In Wednesday's speech, Clinton said the United States would welcome "anyone supporting the Taliban who renounces al Qaeda, lays down their arms, and is willing to participate in the free and open society that is enshrined in the Afghan Constitution." Asked if that meant she thought there were "good Taliban in Pakistan," Clinton, without missing a beat or consulting any notes, said that was for the Pakistani government to decide.

By Laura Rozen, The Cable, July 16, 2009

NEW DELHI - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged an "exciting new approach" to relations between the United States and India on Monday, moving beyond the formal confines of diplomacy to more free-wheeling exchanges among business people, students, and activists.

In a major address at the University of Delhi that mixed political themes with wit and self-deprecation, Mrs. Clinton said, "Diplomacy must go beyond government in the age in which we live." The two countries, she said, would pursue a "comprehensive strategic approach" that covered issues as wide-ranging as education, food security and climate change.

In the first visit by a senior Obama administration official to India, Mrs. Clinton's itinerary showed as vividly as her words the changing nature of the relationship. Only on Monday, three days after arriving, did she finally meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Later in the day, Mrs. Clinton was expected to sign an agreement with the Indian government enabling the United States to monitor the uses of military equipment sold to the India. Such a deal, designed to reduce the risk of proliferation, is considered critical to allowing American military contractors to sell India advanced weapons, including a proposed deal for 126 fighter jets.

Her schedule, here and in Mumbai, has been packed with meetings with Indian business tycoons, a film star, agricultural experts, university students, and rural women who work in cottage industries.

The message, Mrs. Clinton told an enthusiastic audience of 700, is that "we need not only the professional diplomats who serve in our foreign services and represent our countries to one another."

"We need the citizen diplomats, who realize there is no escape," she said, "We are in this together."

Appearing in a colonial-era auditorium at the university, Mrs. Clinton deployed the full power of her celebrity - invoking her unsuccessful run for the Democratic presidential nomination; her husband, former President Bill Clinton; her relationship with President Obama; even her appetite for Indian food.

"I eat way too much of the food at every chance I get," Mrs. Clinton said. "I have to go on a diet when I get back home, back to carrots and celery."

A female student leader asked her to rate the relative advancement of women in various countries, noting that India had its first female leader within three decades of its independence while - "if I may say so," she said - the United States has not yet elected a woman as president.

"You can say so to me," Mrs. Clinton replied, to laughter.

The state of women's rights worldwide remained a "mixed picture," Mrs. Clinton said, though for herself, she would never have predicted, as a student leader, that she would someday become secretary of state or seek to run for president.

After a stop in Mumbai tinged by that city's experience of a terrorist attack, Mrs. Clinton touched only lightly on the issue of Islamic extremism in her speech. In answer to a question, she said she detected a commitment on the part of the Pakistani government and people to take on Taliban insurgents.

Mrs. Clinton drew her biggest response from the audience when she addressed the stereotypes that divide people, which she said were fueled by the entertainment industries in India and the United States.

"If Hollywood and Bollywood were how we all lived our lives, that would surprise me," Mrs. Clinton said. "People watching a Bollywood movie in some other part of Asia think everyone in India is beautiful. And they have dramatic lives, and happy endings."

"And if you were to watch American TV and our movies," she said with a twinkle in her eye, "you'd think we don't wear clothes and we spend a lot of time fighting each other."




By Mark Landler, The New York Times, July 20, 2009

GURGAON, India - It was supposed to be a showcase for how the United States and India can find common cause in fighting climate change: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton toured an innovative, energy-efficient office building on Sunday in this city on the outskirts of New Delhi.

But simmering grievances about how countries should share the burden of cutting greenhouse gases abruptly changed the mood. No sooner had Mrs. Clinton marveled at the building's environmentally friendly features - like windows that flood rooms with light but keep out heat - than her hosts vented frustration at American pressure on India to cut its emissions.

In a meeting with Mrs. Clinton, India's environment and forests minister, Jairam Ramesh, said there was "no case" for the West to push India to reduce carbon dioxide emissions when it already had among the lowest levels of emissions on a per capita basis. "If this pressure is not enough," he said, "we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours."

Rather than projecting solidarity, the visit ended up laying bare the deep divide between developed and developing countries on climate policy - a gulf the Obama administration will have to bridge as it tries to forge a new global agreement on climate change later this year.

Mrs. Clinton, in the first visit to India by a top Obama administration official, offered reassurances that the United States had no intention of forcing India into an economically crippling deal.

"No one wants to, in any way, stall or undermine economic growth that is necessary to lift millions more people out of poverty," Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference. "The United States does not, and will not, do anything that would limit India's economic progress."

American officials said they did not expect these differences to be aired during what was supposed to be an upbeat event, focusing on technology. But they said they did not feel betrayed.

To some extent, India's tough tone is a negotiating tactic as it and other countries prepare to advance their positions in talks leading up to a critical United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen in December.

"We are simply not in a position to take over legally binding emission reduction targets," Mr. Ramesh declared at the news conference. "That does not mean that we are oblivious of our responsibilities."

India's refusal to accept mandatory national cuts in emissions is neither new nor unique. China also opposes a deal with compulsory targets. Both countries say their economic growth should not be constrained when the West never faced such restrictions during its industrialization.

India's stance may reflect its pique at a bill passed in Washington by the House of Representatives, which would impose sanctions on countries that did not accept binding emissions cuts.

It may also reflect domestic political pressure because India acceded this month to an "aspirational" goal by the Group 8 industrialized countries to cap the rise in temperatures because of global warming to two degrees Celsius. The group had sought a pledge of far-reaching reductions in global emissions.

Even the presence here of Todd Stern, Mrs. Clinton's special envoy for climate change, has raised eyebrows: On Saturday, The Times of India published an article with the headline "Climate man's visit shocks India." American officials insist Mrs. Clinton had long planned to bring Mr. Stern, who said climate change presented an opportunity for India to invest in windmills and solar panels. "India, with its knowledge base and entrepreneurial talent and elan, is well positioned to be a winner," he said.

Mr. Ramesh leavened his tough words with a promise of cooperation in "green technology." He proposed teaming up with the United States on solar energy and biomass, and setting up Indian-American centers to study the long-term effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite India's opposition to binding reductions, he said the Indian government was committed to reaching an agreement in Copenhagen. "It is possible for us to narrow our positions," he said.

Mrs. Clinton also sought to put a good face on the differences. "We have many more areas of agreement than has perhaps been appreciated," she said, "and what we're looking for is a way to have a framework that includes everyone and which demands certain steps."

She still seemed fascinated by her tour of the office building, a squat structure built around a circular atrium and known as the ITC Green Center, which has been certified by an American green building council with its highest classification.

Its owner, ITC Ltd., is a conglomerate that operates hotels and owns India's second-largest cigarette maker, a line of business that Indian officials say has made it eager to be regarded as a good corporate citizen. Mrs. Clinton compared the building to great Indian monuments like the Taj Mahal, though she conceded, "No one will confuse it with the Taj Mahal."





By Mark Landler, The New York Times, July 19, 2009

She's back.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- hobbled by a fractured elbow that forced her to cancel two overseas trips during the last month, eclipsed by a globe-trotting President Obama who seemed to do just fine without her in Russia and Italy -- reemerged today.

As part of her comeback tour, Clinton is about to deliver a speech today to the Council on Foreign Relations. Tomorrow she heads off on a trip to India and Thailand, the first since she broke her elbow in a fall on her way to the White House. And just in time, according to policy wonks.

"She is seen as glamorous and in many countries as a valuable symbol of the United States, but it is not at all clear that she has an in-depth influence on foreign policy," said Reginald Dale of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in an interview with the Associated Press. "She needs to decide if she wants to be the administration's mascot or have an impact on actual policy."

Mindful that she and Obama had harsh words over how to approach Iran as opponents during the presidential campaign, Clinton has been faithful to the White House script that was enunciated by Obama during his inaugural address: "If countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fists, they will find an extended hand from us."

But with Washington increasingly concerned about Tehran's crackdown against protesters in the streets and about the regime's nuclear ambitions, Clinton uses today's speech to deliver a warning.

"Neither the president nor I have any illusions that direct dialogue with the Islamic Republic will guarantee success," Clinton says, according to excerpts released by the State Department. "But we also understand the importance of trying to engage Iran and offering its leaders a clear choice: whether to join the international community as a responsible member or to continue down a path to further isolation."

Then she adds, "We remain ready to engage with Iran, but the time for action is now. The opportunity will not remain open indefinitely."

Watch her upcoming travels for further signs of Clinton's comeback strategy.

By Johanna Neuman, Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reaffirmed the administration's interest in engaging Iran in the wake of the disputed election results and what she called a "deplorable and unacceptable" crackdown on dissent.

"Neither the president nor I have any illusions that direct dialogue with the Islamic Republic will guarantee success," Clinton said in an early afternoon speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, according to an advance version of her remarks. "But we also understand the importance of trying to engage Iran and offering its leaders a clear choice: whether to join the international community as a responsible member or to continue down a path to further isolation."

Clinton, however, reiterated that time is running short for Iran to respond. "The time for action is now. The opportunity will not remain open indefinitely," she said. The Group of Eight nations, meeting in Italy last week, set the September meeting of the United Nations General Assembly as a target date for an Iranian answer before the nations seeking to negotiate with Iran on its nuclear program turn to discussing increased sanctions.

"We cannot be afraid or unwilling to engage," Clinton said. "Yet some suggest that this is a sign of weakness or naivete -- or acquiescence to these countries' repression of their own people. That is wrong. The President and I believe that refusing to talk to countries rarely punishes them. And as long as engagement might advance our interests and our values, it is unwise to take it off the table. Negotiations can provide insight into regimes' calculations and the possibility -- even if it seems remote -- that a regime will, eventually, alter its behavior in exchange for the benefits of acceptance into the international community."

The State Department had billed Clinton's speech this afternoon as a "major address," though much of it addressed themes similar to those Clinton outlined in her Senate confirmation statement.





By Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post, July 15, 2009

Her address came Wednesday after some political observers were saying that she was almost absent from the foreign-policy scene in recent weeks.

Washington - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday delivered a blueprint for American diplomacy in the 21st century, rejecting claims of America's waning power and asserting that the United States can still lead the world. That can be done, she said, through broader global partnerships, enhanced resources geared to an interdependent world, and guidance from American values.

Secretary Clinton chose the occasion of a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington to offer her plan for diplomatic action.

Increasingly over recent weeks, she had been judged by some Washington political observers to be almost absent from the foreign-policy scene as President Obama named a number of special envoys for international issues and delivered speeches from foreign venues on aspects of his global vision.

The former first lady, senator, and presidential candidate dubbed the still-new century a time for "smart power." She defined that term as "the intelligent use of all means at our disposal," from military and technological to the scientific and human-resource-based.

Clinton noted at the outset of her speech that a former occupant of her post had advised her, "Don't try to do too much." But she said that a world of climate change, an economic crisis, destabilizing extremism, and threatened pandemics - even as America fights two wars - place a burden on the US for not just more, but a new kind of leadership.

"America will always be a world leader as long as we remain true to our values and embrace policies that keep us abreast of the times," she said.

Some foreign-policy experts who attended the speech praised Clinton for a thorough and impassioned - if at times somewhat wonky - presentation of Mr. Obama's vision of diplomacy through greater engagement, particularly with adversaries. But some said it was a perspective that places too much importance on what America does or doesn't do to explain why other powers act the way they do, and how they can be brought to act differently.

"It was about as astute and accomplished a statement as I've heard setting out the administration's vision for a global role of active engagement across a broad range of issues," says Robert Lieber, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Washington, who attended the speech.

But the speech, he says, flowed from a "questionable assumption, and that is the degree to which our policies and commitment to engagement influence and determine others' actions."

Clinton laid out five policy approaches she said the Obama administration will employ for meeting its global goals:

- Old "vehicles" for cooperation with partners will be updated, and new ones will be created.

- "Principled engagement" will be used with countries that disagree with the US.

- Development will be elevated as a "core pillar" of American power.

- There will be integration of civilian with military action in conflict zones like Afghanistan.

- Sources of American power, such as economic strength and values, will be better leveraged.

By way of explaining the Obama administration's greater reliance on dialogue, Clinton managed to get in a few digs at Bush foreign policy. "We will not tell our partners to take it or leave it, nor will we insist that they are either with us or against us. In today's world," she added, "that's global malpractice."

The secretary of State, who botched an attempt at levity with the Russians over a poorly presented "reset button," did manage to get a few laughs Wednesday. She defined "multitask" as "a very gender-related term."

By Howard LaFranchi, The Christian Science Monitor, July 15, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) - A senior U.S. official on Wednesday defended the United States' ability to push for democratic change in Myanmar, saying an unfinished Obama administration review of Myanmar policy has not hindered U.S. diplomacy with the military-run country.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Scot Marciel told reporters that Myanmar's trial of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has slowed the policy review that began in February. The Myanmar charges could carry up to a five-year prison term for Suu Kyi.

But Marciel, who also serves as U.S. ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will "express our concerns quite clearly" about Myanmar at next week's meeting of foreign ministers from the 10-member ASEAN.

Myanmar, which has been ruled by military juntas since 1962, is a member of ASEAN. The country, also known as Burma, and its treatment of Suu Kyi are expected to be major topics of discussion at the Thailand meeting.

"We're not left empty handed or frozen, if you will, by the fact that the review is not completed," Marciel said. "We've been extremely active on Burma policy."

He described the United States' "fundamental policy" as an effort to encourage Myanmar's government - through public statements and private diplomacy - to talk with opposition leaders, release political prisoners and open up to the outside world. The policy review, he said, is meant to find ways the United States can more effectively push for change in Myanmar.

Not having the review finished, Marciel said, "doesn't mean that we're without diplomatic tools."

U.S. officials have repeatedly called for Suu Kyi's release. She faces charges that she violated the terms of her house arrest by harboring an uninvited American man who entered her residence. Expectations are that the 63-year-old Nobel laureate will be found guilty by a court known for handing out harsh sentences to political dissidents.

Clinton and other top Obama officials have indicated that past U.S. policy toward Myanmar has not produced results.

Kurt Campbell, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, gave a hint last month of a possible new direction in U.S. policy. He said that the United States was "prepared to reach out" to Myanmar. But, he said, the junta's trial of Suu Kyi was "deeply, deeply concerning, and it makes it very difficult to move forward."

The United States has traditionally relied on tough sanctions meant to force Myanmar's generals to respect human rights and release thousands of imprisoned political activists. Those sanctions are widely supported among both senior Democratic and Republican lawmakers in the United States.

Clinton, on a trip through Asia in February, said neither U.S. sanctions nor engagement by Myanmar's neighbors have persuaded the junta to embrace democracy or release Suu Kyi.

It has been 19 years since Suu Kyi's party won a landslide victory at the ballot box but was prevented from taking office. She has been detained without trial for more than 13 of the past 19 years, including the last six.

Marciel said that, in addition to Myanmar, he expected ministers at the meetings in Thailand to discuss climate change, disaster relief, North Korea's nuclear programs, pandemic influenza and other issues.

Clinton, he said, is also to hold a meeting with the foreign ministers from Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand on health and environmental issues in the Mekong River region.

By FOSTER KLUG, The Associated Press, July 16, 2009

Hillary Clinton and Sonia Sotomayor have risen to the top of their professions being the best students in the class, homework always done, notebooks neat and conduct impeccable. They share the perils of their ascension: The world remains white and male and ready to put a high female achiever back in her place if given half a chance.

No one spoke to Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Samuel Alito the way Senate Judiciary Committee members are speaking to Sotomayor. Two exchanges stand out. Senator Lindsey Graham, a smart lawyer and all-around good guy, had to show he was with the program to nick Sotomayor before confirming her.

He asked her about her temperament as described by a number of anonymous people quoted in a Zagat-like review of judges. "She's a terror on the bench," she's "a bully" and "abuses lawyers." Said Graham, "You stand out like a sore thumb."

These are characteristics generally admired in men and needed on the bench to deal with lawyers who arrive unprepared yet full of bravado. She told Graham that she asks "hard questions" of both sides, in her usual calm and steady manner. She could hardly be a courtroom terrorist unless she's been drugged for the last three days of hearings or subject to multiple-personality disorder.

After he was done, Graham said, "I like you, by the way, for whatever that matters. Since I may vote for you that ought to matter to you."

'You Like Me!'

Sotomayor demurred but I could hardly be the only person hoping that Sally Field's cry at the Oscars, "You like me, you really like me!" didn't jump into her head. Men just don't talk to other men they respect that way.

Equally jarring, Senator Tom Coburn told her the next day, "You'll have lots of 'splainin' to do" after Sotomayor tried to respond to his pounding on whether there was a right to "personal self-defense."

Did any senator make "Godfather" jokes to Alito? Coburn's racial stereotyping, drawing from a famous line in "I Love Lucy," was wrong. He either thinks Sotomayor is Cuban, or Ricky Ricardo was Puerto Rican.

While Sotomayor was testifying yesterday, Clinton moved to reclaim her spot as the country's top diplomat with what her aides billed as a major policy address before the Council on Foreign Relations. But at the very moment she was giving this speech, the White House counter-programmed with the president.

Seductive Material

President Barack Obama, standing alongside representatives of the American Nurses Association, waxed nostalgic in the Rose Garden about the dedicated health-care providers who saw him and Michelle through the birth of their daughters.

This was slightly more seductive material in a better setting than Clinton had to offer against a gray backdrop in a non-descript office building in downtown Washington. Obama's speech was carried live. Clinton's speech about treaty frameworks, debt forgiveness and the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review wasn't carried at all.

Clinton was arguably once the most powerful woman in the world. A new kind of professional first lady, she became a beloved one when a negative word from her would have ended a presidency. Rather than retreat to lick her wounds after the Monica ordeal, she won a Senate seat in a state she'd mainly visited as a tourist.

She became the frontrunner for the presidency in 2008 until tsunami Obama came along. She parlayed her defeat into a premier cabinet appointment as secretary of State.

Overshadowed Again

And then, well -- no one promised her the Rose Garden. After six months in the job, Clinton has been overshadowed by a president who is his own stellar diplomat, a vice president who has carved out Iraq for his portfolio, and by major players like former United Nations Ambassador Richard Holbrooke overseeing hot spots.

On big trips, Obama travels solo. Vladimir Putin's foreign minister was present at meetings during the president's Moscow visit, but not Clinton. Last month, the president went to see Saudi King Abdullah without her.

Some of her invisibility is the result of her breaking her elbow on June 17. Since then she's canceled trips to Italy and Greece and worked from home. That's no reason she should be relegated to a meeting with the recently ousted president of Honduras.

Clinton doesn't get to make her own appointments without interference; prize ambassadorships are doled out in the West Wing. Nor does she appear on the Sunday talk shows without clearance, which is rarely granted.

No 'Meltdown'

If Sotomayor makes it through her grilling without what Graham called a "meltdown," a female hazard if ever there was one, she will slip gently into that good quiet that is the Supreme Court, a perfect place for the best student, no worse for the wear and tear.

Clinton's fate will likely be different. Hers may have been a Machiavellian appointment. A potential enemy, she's been brought far enough inside the tent to be seen as disloyal should she criticize the administration, but kept far enough from the center to be a diplomatic heavyweight.

As an added bonus, Bill Clinton's been neutered, having made concessions to dim his own global star to help his wife get the job.

Hillary is set to leave for India today. If she gets any farther from the action, her tenure at State may end up more like that of Colin Powell than Henry Kissinger.

By Margaret Carlson, Bloomberg, July 16, 2009

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton jumped back into the public arena at a choreographed event Wednesday aimed at reasserting her position as the Obama administration's top diplomat.

A month's recovery from a fractured elbow had limited her exposure and contributed to the impression that she had been eclipsed by other heavyweights.

Appearing before a crowd of hundreds to outline U.S. foreign policy goals, Clinton defended President Barack Obama's desire to reach out to adversaries – an approach that she had disparaged as a White House candidate.

"We cannot be afraid or unwilling to engage," she told the Council on Foreign Relations. Clinton took sharp aim at Iran, saying it must act soon to accept U.S. overtures or face new penalties and greater isolation.

Despite offering no new specific proposals, the speech marked Clinton's re-emergence after her injury. On June 17, Clinton fell and broke her right elbow in the basement of the State Department while on her way to the White House.

After the speech, Clinton went to the White House for a private meeting in the Oval Office with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Officials said the visit was among the regular sessions she has had with the president and his national security aides.

Even those meetings were part of a day carefully primed to accentuate Clinton's return.

The State Department went to great lengths to promote the address. Aides billed it as a "major foreign policy speech," and took the unusual step of releasing excerpts three hours before it began, then set up a conference call afterward with two senior officials to discuss it.

The audience consisted mainly of Washington insiders, with a liberal sprinkling of Clinton confidantes and three special envoys - Richard Holbrooke, George Mitchell and Dennis Ross - who have been given large portfolios that some believe have detracted from Clinton's clout.

Set to depart Thursday on an around-the-world trip, Clinton is eager to get back to travel and events, aides said. They deny any rivalries within the foreign policy team and reject suggestions she has been forced into a back-seat role.

But they acknowledge that she has chafed under the limitations imposed by her injury, which notably caused her to miss important conferences in Europe in late June and to be unable to accompany Obama to Russia last week.

The Associated Press, July 16, 2009

Secretary Seeks to Define Approach

The Obama administration is attempting to build a "multi-partner world" in which governments and private groups work collectively on common global problems and in which the United States does not shun dialogue with its adversaries, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said yesterday.

"Our approach to foreign policy must reflect the world as it is, not as it used to be," Clinton said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. "It does not make sense to adapt a 19th-century concert of powers or a 20th-century balance-of-power strategy. We cannot go back to Cold War containment or to unilateralism. . . . We will lead by inducing greater cooperation among a greater number of actors and reducing competition, tilting the balance away from a multi-polar world and toward a multi-partner world."

Clinton's half-hour speech, billed by the State Department as a "major foreign policy address," was intended to provide the intellectual framework for the administration's nascent foreign policy. President Obama has sketched out key themes in a series of high-profile speeches overseas, and Clinton has tackled individual issues such as policy toward China or India, but this was her first substantive attempt to define her approach to the world since her confirmation hearings.

Moreover, as with any new administration, the president has dominated the headlines and set the overall course for foreign policy. The high-profile speech, coming around the administration's six-month mark, also reflected nervousness among Clinton's staff that she has faded from public attention since she broke her elbow last month. She was forced to cancel two overseas trips but will depart today on a week-long journey to India and Thailand.

Clinton reached little new ground on various policies, such as Iran and the Middle East peace process, but instead devoted substantial attention to explaining how she is going to take various goals set by the president, such as eliminating nuclear weapons and combating climate change, and seek to deliver results by reaching out beyond governments to private groups and individuals. In many ways, the speech was a rebuttal to calls from some foreign policy experts that the United States lead a group of great powers to manage the world.

"No nation can meet the world's challenges alone. The issues are too complex. Too many players are competing for influence: from rising powers to corporations to criminal cartels; from NGOs [nongovernmental groups] to al-Qaeda; from state-controlled media to individuals using Twitter," Clinton said. "Most nations worry about the same global threats, from nonproliferation to fighting disease to counterterrorism, but also face very real obstacles for reasons of history, geography, ideology and inertia."

Clinton said that "these two facts demand a different global architecture -- one in which states have clear incentives to cooperate and live up to their responsibilities, as well as strong disincentives to sit on the sidelines or sow discord and division."

Clinton, whose schedule overseas is often chockablock with town hall meetings and other outreach to ordinary citizens, said the administration "will reach out beyond governments, because we believe partnerships with people play a critical role in our 21st-century statecraft."

She also pledged her "personal commitment" to building closer ties with what she described as "major and emerging global powers": China, India, Russia, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and South Africa.

Clinton's language stood in contrast to the oft-quoted remark of the last secretary of state in President Bill Clinton's administration, Madeleine Albright, who dubbed the United States "the indispensable nation," and also the unilateral tendencies of the first administration of President George W. Bush. But Hillary Clinton's speech also built on themes advanced by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2006 and 2008, when she called for "transformational diplomacy."

"Transformational diplomacy is rooted in partnership, not in paternalism," Rice said at Georgetown University in 2006. "In doing things with people, not for them, we seek to use America's diplomatic power to help foreign citizens better their own lives and to build their own nations and to transform their own futures."

But Clinton also offered a forceful defense of the administration's outreach to Iran and Syria, two countries that Rice largely shunned as secretary.

"We cannot be afraid or unwilling to engage. Yet some suggest that this is a sign of naiveté or acquiescence to these countries' repression of their own people. I believe that is wrong," Clinton said. "Negotiations can provide insight into regimes' calculations and the possibility -- even if it seems remote -- that a regime will eventually alter its behavior in exchange for the benefits of acceptance into the international community."

Clinton reaffirmed the administration's interest in engaging Iran in the wake of the disputed election results and despite being "appalled" by the government's crackdown on dissent. "Neither the president nor I have any illusions that dialogue with the Islamic republic will guarantee success of any kind, and the prospects have certainly shifted in the weeks following the election," Clinton said. But she said it is important to talk directly with Iran to frame the possibilities of cooperation -- or isolation over its nuclear program.

Clinton also warned Tehran that an offer of talks would not remain long on the table. "The time for action is now," she said. "The opportunity will not remain open indefinitely."

By Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post, July 16, 2009

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leaves Washington for India Thursday on a mission aimed at advancing an emerging U.S.-Indian strategic partnership. The trip will also take her to Thailand for meetings with Southeast Asian foreign ministers on issues including North Korea's nuclear program. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.

The overseas trip is the first by Secretary of State since she fractured her elbow in a fall last month, and it includes an ambitious agenda in India, where she aims to solidify a strategic partnership begun with the 2005 U.S.-India nuclear cooperation accord.

Under that accord, given final approval by the U.S. Congress last year, India agreed to open non-military aspects of its nuclear program to international inspections, clearing the way for U.S. sales of nuclear technology and fuel to India. It also opened the prospect of a major sale to India of U.S.-built fighter planes.

At a news briefing, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake said the sides hope to conclude two related agreements during the Clinton visit, which will span four days.

One would guarantee that U.S. military technology sent to India is not shared with third countries, and the other would identify two sites in India where U.S. firms would build nuclear power plants - potentially $10 billion dollars worth of business.

In break from past practice, Blake said Clinton will not visit Pakistan on this trip but would do so on another trip in the fall, reportedly in October.

He said under questioning the travel plan should not be seen as any kind of political signal, other than Clinton's intention, on this trip, to highlight the U.S.-India relationship. "She's not really trying to send any signal at all. This is a trip where we're trying to focus on India and really highlight the new strategic partnership, and again all the people-to-people ties. But that doesn't mean that we attach any less importance to Pakistan and Afghanistan. There's already been extensive high-level engagement between the United States and the leaders of both of those countries," he said.

Clinton will first visit Mumbai, India's business capital, for various events before going to New Delhi Sunday to meet key officials including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi.

She holds similar political talks later in the week with Thai officials in Bangkok before flying to the resort island of Phuket to join in an annual dialogue of Pacific-rim country foreign ministers with those of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and U.S. envoy for ASEAN affairs Scott Marciel said those talks would include discussion of the political situation in ASEAN member country Burma, and recent developments concerning North Korea.

All participating countries in the Chinese-sponsored six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program, with the exception of North Korea, are expected to be in Phuket.

But Marceil said it remained to be decided if there would be a five-way meeting on the subject, or just bilateral contacts on implementing the new U.N. sanctions resolution against Pyongyang approved after its latest nuclear test in late May. "Our focus really has been really on winning international enforcement of (resolution) 1874 as well as trying to get the diplomatic process underway. I would just say that all of the five parties are very concerned about recent developments and about what's going on with North Korea's behavior. There's an ongoing discussion about the best way to move the diplomatic process forward and that hasn't been fully resolved yet," he said.

Senior State Department officials later said North Korea had been invited by Thailand to send an envoy to Phuket but had not responded.

The same officials reported major progress in U.N. consultations on North Korean firms and individuals to be sanctioned under Resolution 1874, saying Pyongyang's recent behavior has left it almost completely isolated in the world community.

They said the emerging sanctions are aimed not at causing added hardship for the North Korean people but blocking illicit transactions supporting Pyongyang's weapons programs and prompting it back to nuclear talks.




By David Gollust, Voice of America, July 15, 2009

"...we will remain clear-eyed about our purpose. Not everybody in the world wishes us well or shares our values and interests. Some will seek to undermine our efforts. In those cases, our partnerships will help constrain or deter their actions. And to these foes and would-be foes, let me say: You should know that our focus on diplomacy and development is not an alternative to our national security arsenal. You should never see America's willingness to talk as a sign of weakness to be exploited. We will not hesitate to defend our friends and ourselves vigorously when necessary with the world's strongest military. This is not an option we seek. Nor is it a threat; it is a promise to the American people."

"We watched the energy of Iran's election with great admiration, only to be appalled by the manner in which the government used violence to quell the voices of the Iranian people, then tried to hide its actions by arresting foreign nationals, expelling journalists, and cutting off access to technology. As we ... have made clear, these actions are deplorable and unacceptable. We know very well what we inherited with Iran. We know how far its nuclear program has advanced - and we know that refusing to deal with the Islamic Republic has not succeeded in altering the Iranian march toward a nuclear weapon, reducing Iranian support for terror, or improving Iran's treatment of its citizens. Neither the president nor I have any illusions that direct dialogue with the Islamic Republic will guarantee success. But we also understand the importance of trying to engage Iran and offering its leaders a clear choice: whether to join the international community as a responsible member or to continue down a path to further isolation. Direct talks provide the best vehicle for presenting and explaining that choice..... Iran can become a constructive actor in the region if it stops threatening its neighbors and supporting terrorism. It can assume a responsible position in the international community if it fulfills its obligations on human rights. The choice is clear. We remain ready to engage with Iran, but the time for action is now. The opportunity will not remain open indefinitely."






By Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic, July 15, 2009

MUMBAI, India - India's booming economy has turned some business executives into rock stars. So it was perhaps not surprising that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton - a celebrity in her own right - would stop first in India's commercial capital for a power breakfast with bankers and billionaires.

Mrs. Clinton was to go to New Delhi on Sunday for meetings and ceremonies the next day with government leaders. But she began her visit to India, the first by a top official from the Obama administration, by discussing climate change, education and health care with private-sector potentates.

Flanked by Mukesh Ambani (estimated net worth: $19.5 billion) and Ratan Tata (estimated net worth: $1 billion), Mrs. Clinton heard ideas from seven other guests about how Indian companies could provide health care, education and banking services to India's desperately poor.

"You're so right, Ratan," Mrs. Clinton said to Mr. Tata when he explained how his Tata Group was delivering nutrients to children and young mothers through daily staples like milk. "If we could get the nutritional status of children to improve, it would solve so many problems."

The purpose of her visit, Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference on Saturday, was to "broaden and deepen" dialogue between the United States and India. Given the potential for friction in the issues that face the two countries - climate change, trade and the insurgency in Pakistan - Mrs. Clinton's visit with business leaders was more than a sidelight.

The United States is clearly hoping that Indian business will help bridge potential gaps between the two countries.

Mr. Ambani, for example, proposed that Indians and Americans work together to develop "clean technologies" that would reduce carbon emissions. The Indian government is resisting the Obama administration's push for a global treaty that would mandate cuts in carbon emissions, arguing that developing economies deserve to grow without compulsory constraints.

"Rather than argue about who has a right to pollute," Mr. Ambani said, "we will move forward to create institutions."

As the richest man in India, Mr. Ambani is influential. But he may soon face his own problems with the United States. His conglomerate, Reliance Industries, operates refineries that sell fuel to Iran. That could make him vulnerable to sanctions against Iran being proposed in Congress.

The choice of Mumbai as Mrs. Clinton's first port of call was steeped in symbolism for another reason: It offered her a platform to speak out against the coordinated terrorist attacks here last November that killed 173 people and wounded more than 300.

Mrs. Clinton told an Indian broadcaster, Times Now, that she stayed at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, one of two hotels that had been attacked, partly as a "rebuke" of the terrorists.

Last week, she encouraged India to support Pakistan's effort to stem a radical insurgency in Pakistan, a request that may unsettle some Indians. India and the United States blamed a Pakistan-based militant group for the Mumbai attacks, and India has long complained that Pakistan is not serious enough in cracking down on militants.

Mrs. Clinton met with the hotel's general manager, who lost his wife and child in the attack, as well as other employees, before signing a condolence book.

"Just as India supported America on 9/11, these events are seared in our memory," she said at the news conference, adding that terrorism is "global, it is ruthless, it is nihilistic, and it must be stopped."

Mrs. Clinton delivered her message on an outdoor terrace at the hotel that had been littered with bloodied bodies during the siege. Just before the news conference, the Indian police urged her not to speak there for security reasons, but she resisted.

The rest of her day was devoted to two longtime interests: women's issues and education.

She visited a shop run by the Self Employed Women's Association, a cooperative of 1 million women who make and sell embroidery and other products using microfinance methods. In 1995, Mrs. Clinton visited the group as the first lady; she has stayed in touch since then.

Inevitably, some of these encounters are more successful than others. In the category of less successful was a panel discussion on education at a Jesuit college, at which Mrs. Clinton appeared with Aamir Khan, a prominent Indian film star who campaigns for better teaching.

While Mrs. Clinton offered an earnest discussion of teaching standards in Arkansas, Mr. Khan appeared to condone dropping out of school to pursue entertainment careers.

Mrs. Clinton appeared unfazed, closing with a quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who, she noted, "of course learned so much from Gandhi."





By Mark Landler, The New York Times, July 18, 2009

WASHINGTON - In a rare burst of public frustration with the White House, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that she could not announce a new director for the United States Agency for International Development because the candidate was stuck in a lengthy vetting process.

"It's frustrating beyond words," she declared at a town hall meeting of agency employees. "I pushed very hard, when I knew I was coming here, to get permission from the White House to be able to tell you that help is on the way and someone will be nominated shortly."

"I was unable," Mrs. Clinton said. "The message came back: 'We're not ready.' "

The White House declined to comment on the matter.

The exhaustive vetting process has left posts unfilled across the Obama administration, but the international development agency has been hit particularly hard, with no director since President Obama took office. The administration is expected to name Paul Farmer, a Harvard physician who is also an anthropologist and who has run public health programs in Haiti and Rwanda.

Mrs. Clinton said several people had declined the job, now filled by an acting director, because the financial and personal reporting requirements were so onerous. "I mean, it's ridiculous," she said. "Some very good people just didn't want to be vetted."

The process has become more demanding in the Obama administration, with candidates required, for example, to list every place they have lived since age 18.





By Mark Landler, The New York Times, July 13, 2009

A Nobel Peace Prize-winner is taking on the formidable challenge of trying to forge a diplomatic solution to the leadership crisis in Honduras.

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and interim Honduran leader Roberto Micheletti have agreed to accept Costa Rican President Oscar Arias as a mediator.

The appointment of Arias was backed by the United States and announced Tuesday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton after she met privately with Zelaya at the State Department. Zelaya was ousted last month in a coup.

Arias will conduct the mediation in Costa Rica, where Zelaya intends to travel from Washington, and Clinton said she expected the process to begin soon.

"It is our hope that through this dialogue mechanism overseen by President Arias that there can be a restoration of democratic, constitutional order, a peaceful resolution of this matter that will enable the Honduran people to see the restoration of democracy and a more peaceful future going forward," Clinton said Tuesday.

Zelaya said he was pleased with Arias' appointment.

In Honduras, Micheletti, who had vowed not to negotiate until "things return to normal," appeared to open some space for a settlement to the crisis that began June 28 when Zelaya was detained by the military and forced into exile.

Arias "is a man with a lot of credibility in the world," Micheletti told HRN radio. "We are open to dialogue. We want to be heard."

While Micheletti said he would send a delegation soon to Costa Rica, he also said the meeting "doesn't mean that Zelaya will be allowed to return." He later told a news conference that the dialogue with Arias should "start from the understanding that Zelaya's return is not open to negotiation."

Still, Micheletti's tone was less belligerent than in recent days, when officials threatened to arrest Zelaya for 18 alleged criminal acts, including treason and failing to implement more than 80 laws approved by Honduran lawmakers since he took office in 2006.

In another hint of possible compromise, a Honduran Supreme Court official said Tuesday that political amnesty for Zelaya is possible.

Arias won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for helping broker an end to Central America's civil wars.

Clinton called on all parties to refrain from further violence in an effort to resolve the political crisis and said she was "heartened" that Zelaya had agreed to Arias' mediation and would not again try to force his way back to Honduras, as he did over the weekend.

Zelaya, a wealthy rancher who moved to the left after his election and allied himself with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, made an unsuccessful attempt to return home Sunday in a move that sparked clashes between his supporters and security forces at the Tegucigalpa airport and left at least one person dead.

Clinton would not discuss specifics of the mediation process, which she said would begin soon, but a senior U.S. official said one option being considered would be to forge a compromise under which Zelaya would be allowed to return and serve out his remaining six months in office with limited powers.

Zelaya, in return, would pledge to drop his aspirations for a constitutional change that might allow him to run for another term, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the diplomatic exchanges.

The Obama administration had offered only lukewarm support for Zelaya _ aimed more at bolstering his legal status as Honduras' duly elected president than supporting him personally.

But earlier Tuesday in Moscow, President Barack Obama said the U.S. was supporting the left-leaning politician who often criticized Washington on principle.

"America cannot and should not seek to impose any system of government on any other country, nor would we presume to choose which party or individual should run a country," Obama said. "Evn as we meet here today, America supports now the restoration of the democratically elected president of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies."




The Associated Press, July 12, 2009

WASHINGTON - The world's largest democracy is about to get a better spot on President Barack Obama's dance card.

War in Afghanistan, instability in Pakistan and upheaval in Iran have diverted attention from India. Its cooperation is essential to slow climate change, pass new world trade rules and stem a regional arms race. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's planned trip later this week is the Obama administration's first high-profile effort to resolve differences with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's new government.

Mr. Obama wants to preserve momentum built up during George W. Bush's presidency, when the two countries agreed to cooperate on nuclear energy for the first time since India's 1974 nuclear test. U.S. companies, including General Electric of Fairfield, Connecticut, don't want to lose business in an economy that India projects will expand about 7 percent this year during a global recession.

While India has "a growing capacity and willingness to act" on global problems, its relationship with the United States has yet to be tested during Mr. Obama's watch, says Evan Feigenbaum, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for India under Mr. Bush. On strategic issues, from cutting carbon emissions to ratifying a global nuclear nonproliferation treaty, the two sides need to "manage disagreements towards compromise," he says.

That's increasingly important when India is flexing its muscles as an emerging economic power. It joined Russia and China in challenging the dominance of the U.S. dollar in world currency markets and resisted American pressure for deeper cuts to import tariffs on manufactured goods - an impasse that helped bring about the collapse of world trade negotiations in Doha, Qatar, last July.

"India is asserting itself in ways we didn't imagine possible" a decade ago, with "foreign investment, its technological reach, the importance of Indian corporations, and this creates frictions with the United States," says Stephen P. Cohen, a South Asia expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

At the same time, he says India needs to exert leadership on threats to global security if it wants to be treated like a world power. "So far, India's been a bystander" on the spread of nuclear weapons, Mr. Cohen says, "running away from any larger arms-control agenda" by refusing to join efforts to stop trafficking of weapons materials.

Nuclear arms have long been a point of contention. India has resisted signing a comprehensive test ban treaty unless the entire world moves to nuclear disarmament. While the United States wants to stop a regional arms race, India has been adding to its nuclear arsenal, as have its neighbors China and Pakistan.

In her first policy address on India June 17, Mrs. Clinton said Washington and New Delhi "will have to confront and transcend the mistrust that has hampered our cooperation in the past and address the lingering uncertainties." Her visit will be a trial run for a still-evolving policy, an opportunity to start working through disagreements and showcasing cooperation on clean energy technology, space exploration and education, says Teresita Schaffer, a former State Department official.

American lawmakers want Mrs. Clinton to promote stability and nuclear security by urging India to reduce tensions with Pakistan, said Rep. Jim McDermott, a Washington Democrat and co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on India.

The White House is pressing India for progress on the nuclear energy deal, signed in October, that would allow American companies including General Electric and Westinghouse Electric, a Monroeville, Pennsylvania, subsidiary of Tokyo-based Toshiba, to compete for $175 billion in contracts to build and supply power plants.

Before his re-election to a second five-year term in May, Mr. Singh shelved plans to ratify the treaty because of opposition from communist parties whose support he needed for a parliamentary majority. The victory his Indian National Congress party and allies won means he should have a freer hand to work with the United States.

Still, Mr. Singh isn't embracing all of Mr. Obama's policies. Fighting global warming, he said July 7, is the "historic responsibility" of developed countries. India contributes 4 percent of the world's emissions from burning fossil fuels, compared with 20 percent from the United States, and India has opposed any limits on emissions that would slow its growth.

On June 26, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a clean-energy bill imposing trade penalties on countries that reject emission caps, setting a collision course with India if such penalties appear in final legislation. Trade between the two nations doubled between 2004 and 2008 to $43.4 billion, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

The U.S.-India Business Council invited Mrs. Clinton and two colleagues, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Trade Representative Ron Kirk, as well as Anand Sharma, the new Indian minister of commerce and industry, to a June 16-17 forum with Fortune 500 executives. The point was "to bang the pots and pans and awake both governments to the importance of the U.S.-India relationship," says Ron Somers, president of the Washington-based group.

Coordination with India still "lags behind" American cooperation with European allies and even China, says Mr. Feigenbaum, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. "A lot is hinging on the Clinton visit and what comes after it."

By INDIRA A.R. LAKSHMANAN, The New York Times, July 14, 2009

At a town hall meeting at the United States Agency for International Development on Monday, Clinton complained about the slow vetting of Harvard public-health crusader Paul Farmer for the job of running the soft-power focused agency.

At a town-hall meeting today at the U.S. Agency of International Development, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton lashed out at the slow pace of getting people vetted for administration jobs. As a slightly edited version of her full comments below makes clear, this is an issue she takes very personally.

She had hoped to come to the agency with the name of a nominee to head it -- reputedly Harvard professor Paul Farmer -- but the announcement was nixed by the White House, she said in response to a question from a USAID employee wondering when political leadership of the agemcy would be named.

Here are her comments:

"We have worked very hard with the White House on looking for a candidate who, number one, wants the job; and number two -- (laughter) -- I mean, it's been offered. (Laughter.)

"But most significantly, the clearance and vetting process is a nightmare. And it takes far longer than any of us would want to see. It is frustrating beyond words. I pushed very hard last week, when I knew I was coming here, to get permission from the White House to be able to tell you that help is on the way and someone will be nominated shortly. I was unable. ... The message came back, 'We're not ready.'

"I know that you and I share a very strong desire to get the political leadership in place, because once we get an administrator and a deputy, there are a lot of other positions to be filled. I mean, we've got a long way to go. I mean, as probably many of you know, we don't have all the positions at the State Department filled either.

"So I think anyone who has gone through it or looked at this process would tell you that every administration, it gets worse and it gets more cumbersome. And unfortunately, with everything going on in the nomination and confirmation process, it is just taking a long, long time. And some very good people just didn't want to be vetted. Not that they've done anything wrong, that when they looked at the burdens of it and the fact that people who aren't very well off -- I mean, it's not that they're poor, don't get me wrong, but they're not multimillionaires. You know, you have to hire lawyers; you have to hire accountants. I mean, it is ridiculous!

"I mean, I'll say that as somebody -- and then, here's one of the questions you get asked. First of all, you have to remember everywhere you've lived since you were 18. And beyond a certain age, you can't even remember when you were 18 -- (laughter). It's really burdensome.

"And then one of my all-time favorite questions: "Please tell us every foreign national you know" -- (laughter). ... Finally, I said, this is ridiculous! I can't even remember -- you know, I have lots of cousins I've never met. You're going to ask me to put their names down so they can all be interviewed? That's ridiculous!

"So you're sensing my frustration."

By Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post, July 13, 2009