KINSHASA, Congo - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Congo on Monday to push the Congolese government and the United Nations to end the longstanding bloodshed here, taking special aim at the illicit mineral trade that helps fuel the conflict.

"I am particularly concerned about the exploitation of natural resources," she said, referring to Congo's vast reserves of diamonds, gold, copper, tin and other minerals.

She said that illegal mining was one of the root causes of Congo's violence and that armed groups were sustaining themselves off the mineral riches. "There is a lot of money being made in eastern Congo," Mrs. Clinton said.

The war in eastern Congo may be Africa's worst right now, and Mrs. Clinton is hoping that her visit will revitalize efforts to end a dizzyingly complex conflict involving neighboring countries, dozens of rebel groups and a toxic mix of ethnic and commercial interests.

The fighting and its fallout - mass displacement, hunger and disease - have claimed millions of lives in the past decade.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton will fly to Goma, in the heart of the battle zone.

It was not an easy decision to go there, she said. The city was nearly overrun by rebels last year and lies in a bowl of beautiful but treacherous green mountains, making it difficult for aircraft to land and resulting in several fatal air crashes in recent years.

But Mrs. Clinton said the importance of the visit outweighed the risks.

In Goma, Mrs. Clinton plans to meet with several women who have been raped, one of the more personal consequences of this unending war. The United Nations calls eastern Congo the rape capital of the world because hundreds of thousands of women have been sexually assaulted by the various militias haunting the hills. Recently, there has been a sharp increase in cases of men raping men as well.

"Women are being turned into weapons of war," Mrs. Clinton said on the plane from Angola to Congo, the fourth stop on her seven-nation African tour.

The Congo visit has a sharper point to it than many of the other stops. Mrs. Clinton has cast herself as an advocate for women, and eastern Congo desperately needs something to lift it out of its morass of violence, which seems increasingly unsolvable.

On Monday, Mrs. Clinton shared the stage at a town hall meeting with Dikembe Mutombo, a Congolese basketball star who made millions playing professionally in America and came home to build a hospital. Mr. Mutombo spoke passionately of his country's problems and the sense of defeat creeping across the land.

"Don't lose your hope," he told students gathered at the meeting. "That is what is happening in Congo, especially among young people. You are losing hope. You are thinking that nobody cares about you."

Mrs. Clinton has explained that a big part of this Africa tour is to show that America does care about the continent, and not just because President Obama's father was Kenyan.

Again on Monday, in both Angola, a huge oil producer and emerging African heavyweight, and Congo, Mrs. Clinton spoke of reformulating the United States-Africa relationship.

Angola, which used to be an Eastern bloc ally and the site of one of the cold war's most intense, longest-running battles, seemed to respond warmly. The foreign minister, Assunçao dos Anjos, called Mrs. Clinton's visit "the most sublime, most magnanimous moment" that "changes everything." Later in the morning, Mrs. Clinton spoke with Angola's president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, about environmental issues, democratic reform and possible American-Angolan military cooperation.

But in Congo, that message is a tougher sell.

At the town hall meeting, one student stood up and asked Mrs. Clinton if he were to become president of Congo tomorrow, and if he tried to be independent from the West and follow his own ideas, would he be assassinated? It was a not so thinly veiled reference to Patrice Lumumba, Congo's first democratically elected prime minister, who was killed in 1961 with the help of the C.I.A.

Mrs. Clinton was not defensive. "I can't excuse this past and I won't try," she said. Congo and much of Africa, she said, have been dominated by "a history of colonialism and abuse."

But the question, she said, was this: "Will I be dragged down by the past, or will I decide to do something to have a better future?"

She bristled, though, at another student who asked what her husband, Bill Clinton, thought about a Chinese loan offer to Congo. "You want me to tell you what my husband thinks? she asked. "If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband."





By Jeffrey Gettleman, The New York Times, August 10, 2009

GOMA, Congo - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday was demanding an end to rampant sexual violence that has engulfed war-ravaged eastern Congo.

Clinton was carrying that message to government officials and U.N. peacekeepers in the eastern city of Goma, which has become the epicenter of an epidemic of gang rapes and other sexual crimes amid continuing fighting between the army and rebel groups.

The United Nations has recorded at least 200,000 cases of sexual violence against women and girls in the region since conflict erupted in 1996, something Clinton deplored as "one of mankind's greatest atrocities" before she arrived.

The figures, Clinton told a group university students in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa on Monday, are "astonishing and horrible." She urged the youth of Congo to mount nationwide protests against such abuses and said she would push the government hard on the issue.

"The entire society needs to be speaking out against this," she said. "It should be a mark of shame anywhere, in any country. I hope that that will become a real cause here in Kinshasa that will sweep across the country."

Clinton came to Goma aboard a U.N. plane over the objections of some top aides who were concerned about security and logistics for the visit. She is the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the city, according to the State Department historian's office.

Although fighting has eased since a 2003 peace deal, the army and rebel groups, fighting over eastern Congo's vast mineral wealth, are still attacking villages, killing civilians and committing brutal atrocities.

In Goma, Clinton was meeting with Congolese President Joseph Kabila in a tent at a compound on the shore of Lake Kivu. She also plans to meet with victims of the sexual violence and officers in the U.N. peacekeeping force that is deployed in the Congo.

Members of Kabila's armed forces are accused of taking part in the brutality, including gang rapes that have led to unwanted pregnancies, serious injuries and death to tens of thousands of women and girls.

"We have to speak out against the impunity of those in positions of authority who either commit these crimes or condone it," Clinton said.

Earlier this month, a leading human rights group demanded that Congo crack down on sexual violence often perpetrated by military generals and other top officers. It cited U.N. data showing that 7,703 cases of sexual violence by soldiers were reported last year.

Human Rights Watch said the Congolese authorities have failed to prevent the attacks and called on the U.N. Security Council to take tough steps, including travel bans, against individuals or governments that commit or condone sexual violence in Congo and elsewhere.

Clinton said the United States would support U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his call last week for global action to stop government forces and armed groups from using sexual violence as a tool of warfare.

Clinton's Congo stop is the latest in an 11-day journey through Africa to promote development and good governance and underscore the Obama administration's commitment to the world's poorest continent.

She arrived in Congo after stops in Angola, South Africa and Kenya. She will also visit Nigeria, Liberia and Cape Verde.

By MATTHEW LEE, The Associated Press, August 11, 2009

PARIS - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joined a chorus of predominantly Western voices condemning the sentencing of Myanmar's pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, on Tuesday, demanding her release and saying that, without a change in its human rights practices, Myanmar's scheduled elections next year would be illegitimate.

"She should not have been tried, and she should not have been convicted," Mrs. Clinton told reporters in Goma, Congo, where she is on an African tour. "We continue to call for her release."

"We also call for the release of more than 2,000 political prisoners, including the American, John Yettaw," she said, referring to a 53-year-old man who swam across a lake in central Yangon, Myanmar's main city, last May and spent two nights in Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi's villa. The episode led to the case against her on charges of violating the terms of her house arrest.

Mrs. Clinton said: "We are concerned about the harsh punishment. The Burmese junta should immediately end its repression." She added that Myanmar's leaders needed to start a dialogue with the political opposition and address human rights obligations, "otherwise the elections they have scheduled for next year will have absolutely no legitimacy."

Mrs. Clinton spoke after European governments demanded the immediate and unconditional release of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, threatening stricter sanctions against the military regime there to restrict arms supplies and curb its trade with the outside world.

In a statement, the 27-nation European Union said it was ready to impose "targeted measures against those responsible for the verdict" and to stiffen some earlier measures, including an arms export ban, visa restrictions and financial sanctions.

Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, called on the junta to "immediately and unconditionally release" Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi and "to engage with her without delay as an essential partner in the process of national dialogue and reconciliation."

Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace prize in 1991. Fourteen other winners responded to the sentencing on Tuesday with a letter calling on the Security Council to investigate the junta for "war crimes and crimes against humanity." In many parts of the world, her trial has been followed closely and her cause has been embraced by a broad range of politicians and human rights advocates.

"Citizens across the globe are asking world leaders to hold this brutal regime to account," said Ricken Patel, director of an online campaign network called Avaaz.org. "Aung San Suu Kyi's detention today on spurious charges removes any shred of legitimacy."

Irene Khan, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said in a statement in London that, while the Myanmar authorities "will hope that a sentence that is shorter than the maximum will be seen by the international community as an act of leniency", it "must not be seen as such."

Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi "should never have been arrested in the first place. The only issue here is her immediate and unconditional release," Ms. Khan said.

It was not immediately clear how Myanmar's Asian neighbors would react. Asian nations generally react cautiously to events in Myanmar, though they do sometimes offer critical comments. Analysts said that, in this instance, they may be willing to accept Myanmar's protestations of leniency.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, however, called the sentencing "brutal and unjust" and said European sanctions should focus on profitable industries including timber and ruby mining. The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said in a statement the European Union should impose new sanctions aimed at the Myanmar leadership "and sparing the civilian population, which we should continue to protect and assist."

In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was "saddened and angry" at her sentencing and said it was designed by the ruling military leaders of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, to keep her out of elections next year.

In a statement, he said: "It is further proof that the military regime in Burma is determined to act with total disregard for accepted standards of the rule of law in defiance of international opinion."

Calling on the Security Council to impose a global prohibition on arms sales, he added: "The facade of her prosecution is made more monstrous because its real objective is to sever her bond with the people for whom she is a beacon of hope and resistance." France also called for an arms embargo.

The Obama administration has been reviewing American policy toward Myanmar since February, when Secretary of State Clinton declared that the existing sanctions against its military-run government had been ineffective.

At a meeting of the Association of South East Asian nations in Thailand last month, Mrs. Clinton spoke in unusually detailed terms in discussing the country's human rights record and its treatment of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi.

"We are deeply concerned by the reports of continuing human rights abuses within Burma," she said at the time, "and particularly by actions that are attributed to the Burmese military, concerning the mistreatment and abuse of young girls."

She also dismissed the charges against Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi as "baseless and totally unacceptable" and said an improvement of ties with Washington depended on the Myanmar junta's handling of human rights issues.

"Our position is that we are willing to have a more productive partnership with Burma if they take steps that are self-evident," she said.

By Alan Cowell and Jeffrey Gettleman, The New York Times, August 11, 2009

LUANDA, Angola, Aug. 9 -- Hillary Rodham Clinton made the first visit to Angola by a U.S. secretary of state in seven years, trying Sunday to strengthen relations with a growing oil producer that is being aggressively courted by China.

Clinton sought to emphasize the positive in her two-day visit, praising Angola's efforts to rebuild after a 27-year civil war that ended in 2002. But during a meeting in parliament, opposition politicians urged her to press for more democratic behavior from President José Eduardo dos Santos, who has been in power for three decades.

"Africa and Angola need, not strong men, but strong institutions," Alda Sachiambo, leader of the UNITA caucus, said at the televised meeting, throwing back at Clinton a line from a speech President Obama gave last month in Ghana.

Sachiambo said the U.S. government has a "greater responsibility" to push for fair treatment for the opposition, because it funded UNITA during the war.

Clinton did not respond directly, but told the lawmakers: "In a democracy such as yours, the parliament must demand accountability and transparency, and stand against financial corruption and abuse of power."

Angola was the third stop on Clinton's seven-nation tour of Africa, which has emphasized good governance and economic growth. Clinton was notably less critical of Angola's democratic failings -- corruption and a lack of press freedom -- than she was of Kenya's performance during her stop there last week.

A senior administration official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said Clinton believes the Angolans are "moving in the right direction, so it's better to encourage them along."

Angola's oil production has surged in recent years, and rivals Nigeria as the biggest petroleum exporter in sub-Saharan Africa. It is the No. 7 supplier of oil to the United States.

While the oil-fueled economy grew a sizzling 27 percent last year, many Angolans haven't seen improvement in their lives. About two-thirds of the population lives on less than $2 a day, according to United Nations figures.

Luanda, an Atlantic coastal capital dotted with a few pastel-colored Portuguese colonial buildings, is full of tin-roofed shacks and dilapidated apartment buildings in faded beige and pink, with shirts flapping from clotheslines.

Oil diplomacy was the top item on Clinton's agenda, and she emphasized in her meetings with Angolan officials the need for transparency in awarding contracts and spending oil proceeds, according to her aides.

In recent years, China has provided Angola with billions of dollars in oil-backed loans to rebuild hospitals, schools and roads, and Chinese companies have formed joint ventures with Angolan petroleum companies. Major U.S. oil companies such as Chevron and Exxon Mobile are heavily involved in the oil sector here.

Clinton, however, told reporters she was not worried about the Chinese presence. "I'm looking at what the United States can do to further and deepen our relationship" with Angola, she said.

Asked about the high level of corruption here, Clinton told reporters that Angola has made progress by posting oil revenues online and working with the U.S. Treasury on increasing transparency.

She also praised Angola for holding its first legislative elections in 16 years last year. But aides said she told Angolan officials that they had to have a presidential election "in the near future." Elections were supposed to be held in 2009, but Dos Santos has not set a date.

The U.S. government backed UNITA in the war that turned Angola into a Cold War battleground. Angola has shed its Marxist past and normalized relations with the United States under President Bill Clinton.

By Mary Beth Sheridan, The Washington Post, August 10, 2009

LUANDA, Angola - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinto gave a gentle nudge to Angola on Sunday, urging this up-and-coming nation, a major oil producer that has drawn close to China, to push harder to democratize.

Mrs. Clinton said she was "encouraged by the steps the Angolan government has taken," like the peaceful parliamentary election last year. But she said the country needs to go further, holding presidential elections and investigating human rights abuses, sooner than later.

"We know opportunity and prosperity for the Angolan people depend on good governance and democracy," Mrs. Clinton said, emphasizing what has become the dominant theme of her seven-nation Africa tour.

For years Angola was a no-go zone, the scene of one of the fiercest battles of the cold war, in which American-backed rebels squared off against tens of thousands of Cuban troops in a jungle war that dragged on for more than two decades and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The guns are quiet now, and a beat of life is returning to the streets of Luanda, the capital, a city with graceful architecture sprawled along the sea.

But once again Angola is a crucial battleground. This time, it is the contest for influence in Africa, largely fought between the United States and an increasingly powerful, resource-hungry China.

As if to underscore that, a Chinese forklift crew whizzed past Mrs. Clinton's motorcade just as she pulled up to the hilltop presidential palace Sunday afternoon to meet Angolan officials. Roads, bridges, schools, railways, phone lines - the Chinese are working on them all, lifting this country out of the ruins of war and hoping in return to secure the inside track on Angola's crude oil reserves, which now have it tied with Nigeria for the title of Africa's biggest oil producer.

But Mrs. Clinton did not bite when asked to comment on American efforts to check the rising Chinese influence. "I'm not looking at what anyone else does in Angola," she said at a news conference. "I'm looking at what the United States can do."

The United States has had a sad history with Angola, the third stop on Mrs. Clinton's Africa trip. In the 18th century, Angola was a major slave market, with countless Angolans shipped to the United States in chains. After Angola won independence from Portugal in 1975, the United States bankrolled what turned out to be a brutal rebel movement.

The rebels lost, the Communist, Cuban-backed movement won and though the Angolan government today says that it has outgrown Marxism, the nation's flag still looks much like the Soviet hammer and sickle.

"This is a history of missed encounters," said Angela Braganca, an Angolan lawmaker.

American diplomats here said Mrs. Clinton will be the first secretary of state to spend the night in the country.

With the nation recovering, the American government does not want to miss out on Angola's oil bonanza. ExxonMobil and Chevron are already here, competing against Chinese firms for new deals. Last year imports from Angola to the United States surged by more than 50 percent.

But the oil money has cleaved Angolan society into the haves and the have-nots, a situation true in many African countries. Mrs. Clinton saw this firsthand. As she sat down for a luncheon buffet at the hilltop palace, the tables heaped with lobster and cakes, the rusty roofs of the teeming slums shimmered below.

Though Angola's per capita gross domestic product is more than $4,000, a huge sum by African standards, the country remains at the bottom of United Nations development indexes measuring quality of life. The average life span for an Angolan man is 37 years.

Part of the reason millions of Angolans remain so poor is corruption. According to Human Rights Watch, billions of dollars of oil money have simply disappeared. Opposition politicians told Mrs. Clinton that the Angolan government needed to be investigated and that there was no free press in the country.

Mrs. Clinton seemed quite aware of many of these issues, but again, her tone toward Angolan officials seemed more friendly than pushy.

"Corruption is a problem everywhere," Mrs. Clinton said at the news conference, with the country's foreign minister standing beside her. "It's only fair to add that Angola has begun taking steps to increase transparency."

By Jeffrey Gettleman, The New York Times, August 9, 2009

With both countries under new leadership, Washington sees an opportunity. In Johannesburg, Hillary Clinton presses Jacob Zuma to play an active role in promoting democracy throughout Africa.

Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa - Relations between the United States and South Africa have been so rocky in recent years that former U.S. Ambassador Eric Bost used to complain that he couldn't get Cabinet ministers here to return his calls.

With South Africa pulling in the opposite direction under former President Thabo Mbeki on issues such as how to deal with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and the move to arrest Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir on war crimes charges, the Bush administration found itself stymied.

But with two new leaders in power, President Obama and South African President Jacob Zuma, the United States sees a chance to remake relations.

On Saturday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton took the first steps toward putting the relationship with sub-Saharan Africa's most powerful economy back on the rails, meeting with Zuma in the east coast city of Durban.

"In both countries there are two new administrations which are taking that relationship to a level higher. That is what we are trying to do," Zuma said after meeting Clinton.

The secretary of State pressed for the South African president to take a strong leadership role on Zimbabwe, where a power-sharing deal signed last year is being undermined by hard-liners in Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.

With a string of democratic setbacks in Africa from Nigeria to Kenya, she also urged South Africa to play a more active role in pressing for democracy, transparency and good governance across the continent.

Underscoring the leadership role the U.S. hopes Zuma will take in Africa, Clinton indicated that their talks covered the three major crises on the continent: Zimbabwe; Somalia, where a fragile government is fighting an Islamic insurgency; and Sudan, whose government is implicated in the large-scale killings and displacement of tribespeople in the Darfur region.

At a meeting with South African business leaders Friday, Clinton said that as the continent's economic powerhouse, South Africa was well placed to tout the benefits of democracy across Africa.

She's been critical of Kenyan leaders for widespread graft and corruption in the country, as well as for failing to prosecute those responsible for election violence last year that claimed at least 1,500 lives.

But her criticisms were dismissed by some analysts as America "lecturing" Africans -- hence the Obama administration's eagerness to see South Africa playing a more active role in advocating democracy and good governance in Africa.

Clinton's main theme during her seven-nation visit to Africa is increasing trade instead of aid. But analysts say U.S. strategic priorities in Africa remain as they were under the Bush administration: access to oil; competition for resources with China, which has aggressively wooed African leaders; and combating terrorist movements in northern Africa.

The main departure of the Obama administration, analysts say, is a global food initiative announced last month at the Group of 8 meeting of industrialized nations in Rome, designed to pump billions of dollars into developing agriculture in poor nations to reduce hunger, poverty and reliance on food aid.

Dan Glickman, an agriculture secretary in the Clinton administration and a strong proponent of the initiative, said the policy had the potential to lift millions of poor farmers, mainly women, out of poverty.

"The trick is always the follow-up," he said in a telephone interview. He said the G-8 made the greatest commitment in 40 years to rebuild agriculture in the developing world. "Now, the trick is, will the developed world, the U.S. and Europe and other parts of the world, put in the commitment of resources?"

Gerald LeMelle, executive director of the Washington-based analytical organization Africa Action, said the food initiative would be of limited assistance in reducing poverty in Africa unless Europe and the U.S. stopped propping up their own farmers and opened their markets to African produce.

"The G-8 countries subsidize their farmers to the tune of $785 billion a year," he said. "They can flood Africa with cheap agricultural products and completely undermine African farmers."

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times, August 9, 2009

At a housing project for the homeless she once visited as first lady, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton basked in the cheers of an adoring crowd Saturday and pronounced U.S.-South African ties on the mend after years of strain.

Clinton was in her element as she worked rope lines at the project on the outskirts of Cape Town that she had toured by herself in 1997 and then in 1998, with her husband, President Bill Clinton, in tow to see the progress.

For her third trip, a ragtag marching band welcomed her to the Victoria Mxenge Housing Project, which has grown from 18 homes to 579 since she first visited. It got underway in the early 1990s with U.S. money.

"Thank you for the progress report. I am very pleased," she said. "Congratulations."

Clinton arrived in Cape Town, on the Atlantic coast, from the capital, Pretoria, and the Indian Ocean port of Durban. In Durban, she met Saturday with the new South African president, Jacob Zuma, on a mission to improve the U.S. relationship with Africa's most prosperous nation.

The Associated Press, August 9, 2009

It's been 17 years since Bill and Hillary Clinton offered themselves up to American voters as a two-for-one package deal, and began adjusting notions of the role of the personal and the political in public life.

But in all those years - his scandals, her pillorying by the right, his jet-setting for the Clinton Global Initiative, her slog through smalltown America as a presidential candidate - it's hard to think of a week when the partnership worked as expertly as it did in the rescue of two journalists from North Korea.

Here was Hillary Clinton, embarking on a seven-country tour of Africa as secretary of state, while her husband, the former president, successfully carried off an ultra-sensitive mission to one of the world's most recalcitrant regimes.

It's an even more impressive piece of choreography given the other outsize political figures - each with their own personal histories with the Clintons - involved in this week's homecoming of the journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling.

There was Barack Obama, of course, who had brawled with both Clintons during the Democratic primaries. Obama also had to weigh Clinton's history of difficulties in sticking to a script, knowing that a stray remark or mis-step from the former president could expose him to attack from the right, which is opposed to dealings with North Korea.

Then there was Al Gore, the journalists' employer as head of Current TV, who had to bury his resentments that Bill Clinton's affairs in the White House may have cost him the presidency.

For many, the seemingly flawless execution of the plan to free the two journalists, who had been sentenced to 12 years' hard labour for briefly straying into North Korean territory, demolished the notion that, in choosing his former rival as secretary of state, Obama was getting not so much a twofer as trouble.

In the conventional wisdom of six months ago, the former president would not be able to resist meddling at the state department or the White House, and his network of contacts at the Clinton Global Initiative could potentially embarrass Obama. "This is a very effective rejoinder to any one who had still had questions about the wisdom and absolute authority of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state," said Ann Lewis, a senior adviser to Clinton during her run for the White House.

Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation agreed: "The Obama people always saw Bill as more of a threat than Hillary," he said. "But now if I were Obama I'd say: great let's use Bill for other things."

Not everyone was convinced. In the New York Times, Maureen Dowd saw the episode as one more instance of Bill Clinton hogging the spotlight, shoving aside Obama and his own wife, who had only recently returned to travel after breaking her elbow in June. "Just as Hillary muscled her way back into the spotlight, moving past her broken elbow and grabbing the focus from her bevy of peacock envoys, she was blown off the radar screen again by an even more powerful envoy: the one she lives with," Dowd wrote.

But she conceded that Bill Clinton turned in a fine performance. The man accused of damaging his wife's run for the White House by going off-message or indulging in angry rants against Obama and the media, in public at least kept his personal views in check.

He posed stony-faced for the photographs with Kim Jong-il, and after landing at Burbank airport, slipped away gracefully, leaving the spotlight to the two journalists.

Rather than exploiting Clinton's influence as many had feared, his wealthy friends even picked up the tab for the trip, with property mogul Steve Bing lending his plane and paying for the fuel. Clinton even did one better than Jimmy Carter, widely seen to have overstepped his brief when he was deployed as special envoy to North Korea in 1994.

The spotless behaviour carried on through the week. Back in New York on Thursday, the former president issued only the briefest of statements about his trip. He then announced a deal with two pharmaceutical giants to bring down the costs of antiretroviral drugs, just in time for his wife's scheduled visit to an Aids project in South Africa later today.

It's too early to say whether Clinton's three-hour session with Kim Jong-il will reopen negotiations to get North Korea to scrap its nuclear programme. The White House maintains that Clinton was carrying no message from Obama and that no negotiations took place.

However, foreign policy experts are sceptical that the former president confined himself to talking about the two journalists. "The notion that they could spend three hours and not talk about the nuclear missile stuff - gosh, that's not believable. Of course they talked about the nuclear stuff. The north has been looking for an opening to go back to bilateral talks," said Leon Sigal, a North Korea scholar at the Social Science Research Council.

Clinton is due to debrief the National Security Council and Obama on his trip.

That on its own extends his role in the Obama administration from one-time trouble shooter to an important source of first-hand information on the state of mind of one of the world's least understood leaders. It also serves as a reminder that Hillary Clinton, as a former first lady, has more than the usual clout of a secretary of state.

"It would be wrong to conclude from this that Bill Clinton is going to have an ongoing role in political diplomacy for this administration," said David Rothkopf, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "But sending Bill Clinton to North Korea has the effect of reminding everybody that this is somebody with extraordinary status and this is a woman with a role in the world that goes beyond that typically associated with secretary of state. While we are not going to find Bill Clinton front and centre of this administration going forward it does reinforce his wife's role."

The week's events also confounded those who had been suggesting that Hillary Clinton had been shunted aside at the state department - shut out of Obama's inner circle because of lingering animosities and a new management structure that involved hiving off hotspots such as the Middle East and Afghanistan to special envoys who report to the president as well as the secretary of state.

The speculation about Hillary Clinton's isolation heightened in June after she slipped and broke her elbow, and was forced to cancel public appearances.

Some foreign policy scholars viewed it as natural that Obama would take the lead in foreign policy. But Tina Brown, in the Daily Beast, fretted that Clinton's lack of visibility - and installing various envoys - would rob her of real power. "It's time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burka," she wrote.

Behind the scenes, Clinton was busy building relationships at the state department and the White House. Unlike Condoleezza Rice, she ventured regularly out of her seventh-floor offices to meet desk officers. She has regular access to the White House, and has had weekly one-on-one meetings with Obama - though there are still reports of leftover animosities between their personal staffs.

She also began to put out her own foreign policy message, often playing the bad cop to Obama's more conciliatory statements. She waded into a spat with North Korea, saying its leadership was behaving like "small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention".

North Korea issued a statement saying: "Sometimes she looks like a primary school girl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping."

However, Clinton apparently set aside those exchanges to authorise her husband's mission. This week's triumph could now give her a chance to put her own stamp on foreign policy.

"The one part of being secretary of state that we have not seen yet is whether Hillary Clinton can be a strategist. Is she able to do the three layer triple chess board moves that are the hallmark of a great secretary of state or is she just a tool of Obama, and he is ultimately the strategist?" said Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation.

By Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, August 7, 2009

In a CNN interview, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton dismissed Republican criticism of a trip by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to free two American journalists held in North Korea, and said Iran's prosecution of protesters showed that the country is "afraid of its own people."

In the interview, which will be broadcast on CNN on Sunday, Mrs. Clinton responded to harsh criticism from John Bolton, an ambassador to the United Nations during the Bush administration.

Mr. Bolton had characterized the mission to free the American journalists as "unwise." In an opinion article published Tuesday, Mr. Bolton criticized the Obama administration for sending Mr. Clinton to Pyongyang to negotiate the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been sentenced to hard labor for allegedly illegally crossing into North Korea. "Despite decades of bipartisan U.S. rhetoric about not negotiating with terrorists for the release of hostages," he said, "it seems that the Obama administration not only chose to negotiate, but to send a former president to do so."

When asked about Mr. Bolton's comments, Mrs. Clinton laughed, noted that similar efforts have been carried out before by presidents and members of Congress and summed up Mr. Bolton's position as an attempt to politicize a humanitarian issue.

"If President Obama walked on water, you'd say he couldn't swim," she said, according to Fareed Zakaria, who conducted the CNN interview.

Mr. Zakaria also asked Mrs. Clinton about "show trials" for political protesters and journalists in Iran.

"It is a sign of weakness," Mrs. Clinton said of the trials. "It demonstrates, I think, better than any of us could ever say, that this Iranian leadership is afraid of their own people, and afraid of the truth and the facts coming out."

Mr. Zakaria interviewed Mrs. Clinton on Tuesday in Kenya. Their discussion will be broadcast Sunday on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS."





By Ashley Southall, The New York Times, August 7, 2009

The secretary of State and President Obama are making strong statements, but they'll need to follow through.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's seven-nation tour of Africa reaffirms the administration's pledge to keep the long-neglected continent in its sights. On her first stops in Kenya and South Africa this week, Clinton stuck with the message of tough love that President Obama delivered in Ghana last month, balancing trade and development talk with the need to confront lawlessness and impunity. It's a good beginning to an Africa policy still in the making.

Africa is an area where Democrats and Republicans have found agreement, although too often what they have agreed is to pay little attention to it. President George W. Bush's support for HIV/AIDS and malaria programs were widely hailed on the continent, even when his global "war on terror" made him personally unpopular. Now Obama has the opportunity to build on those programs while using his native-son credentials to push for more reform in a region that is sometimes irked by U.S. finger-wagging.

Last month, Obama galvanized fellow leaders of the Group of 8 countries to provide $20 billion over three years for global agricultural development, much of that to benefit Africa. Now he has to ensure that donors follow through, starting with the United States. Bills before both houses of Congress for next year's budget would fall short of the more than $1 billion needed to meet the U.S. annual commitment. Obama will have to press for more if he is to deliver on his goal of African "food security"-- raising productivity to feed Africans and increase exports.

While addressing economic issues this week, Clinton has also expanded on Obama's demand for good governance and rule of law. She admonished the leaders of Kenya for corruption and their failure to prosecute perpetrators of violence that claimed more than 1,000 lives after the country's disputed 2007 election. She told the president of Somalia's transitional government that the United States would support him against insurgents and pirates (we hope by addressing poverty as well as bolstering the military). And she sought the support of South Africa's new president in forcing Zimbabwe's repressive ruler to honor a power-sharing agreement. In Congo, she will shine needed light on political violence against women; in Nigeria, she'll turn her attention to rebels engaged in kidnapping and siphoning a million barrels of oil a day to an international black market.

The administration is right that foreign aid and institution-building must go hand in hand if there is to be transformational change in Africa. Fighting poverty is essential for security. Although elections are necessary for democracy, they are insufficient without a functioning judicial system to keep elected leaders in check.

The Los Angeles Times, August 8, 2009

New South African Government Eschews Skeptical, Unscientific Approach of Past

PRETORIA, South Africa, Aug. 7 -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday welcomed the new South African government's approach to fighting HIV/AIDS after years in which officials questioned the link between the two and suggested such "cures" as eating beets and garlic.

"We have the challenge everyone is aware of. We have to make up for some lost time, but we are looking forward," Clinton said at a U.S.-funded clinic where patients receive antiretroviral drugs.

The clinic visit underscored a new juncture in U.S.-South African relations after years of tensions over AIDS, the Iraq war and other issues. Clinton wants to improve ties with a country regarded as Africa's economic powerhouse, and she and the South African foreign minister agreed to work together more closely on such issues as climate change and nuclear nonproliferation.

Clinton was accompanied to several of her meetings by Eric Goosby, the U.S. global AIDS coordinator. That "shows how eager we are to broaden and deepen our relationship" with the new government led by President Jacob Zuma, she said.

South Africa has the highest number of HIV-positive people in the world, with about one in five adults, or nearly 6 million people, infected. But under Zuma's predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, authorities questioned whether HIV caused AIDS and were skeptical about treating it with antiretroviral drugs. One of Mbeki's health ministers urged HIV-positive people to cure themselves by eating lemons, beets and garlic.

The policies caused the premature deaths of an estimated 365,000 people, according to a recent study by Harvard University researchers.

Goosby said in an interview that he was "thrilled" about the AIDS policies of Zuma, who has pledged to halve the incidence of HIV in the country.

The U.S. government's global AIDS program has a major presence in South Africa, spending $550 million a year on treatment and testing. Clinton said the U.S. program "stands ready to work with the South African government in whatever way the government believes is effective."

Clinton's delegation toured a clinic in the poor mining town of Cullinan, outside Pretoria, that is funded by the U.S. and South African governments. She was greeted in the courtyard of the low-slung building by about two dozen children in pink and red T-shirts, some of them patients at the clinic, others orphans whose parents had died of AIDS-related illnesses.

Before the facility opened in 2006, the nearest clinic that treated people with HIV/AIDS was 40 miles away, and transportation there was too expensive for many residents, officials said.

"It has changed life around this place as people used to know it," South Africa's new health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, told Clinton after she toured the clinic.

A young woman who has been treated at the clinic, Simangele Ncube, told Clinton that when she tested positive for HIV, "I felt like the world was collapsing in on me."

But "here I am -- and I look good," she said.

More than 900 people die of AIDS-related causes each day in South Africa. U.S. Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), the head of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds foreign aid programs, said at the ceremony that she hopes to see more assistance going toward prevention, rather than just treatment.

South Africa is the second stop on Clinton's seven-nation swing through Africa, a trip aimed at improving ties with the continent and addressing security, economic and development concerns.

One of Clinton's priorities is building closer ties with what she called "major and emerging global powers," including South Africa and countries such as China, India and Brazil.

The Obama administration is especially hopeful that South Africa will push the authoritarian president of neighboring Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, to cease harassment of opposition leaders and the media.

South Africa's foreign minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said her government was trying to persuade Mugabe to make more progress on a power-sharing agreement signed in February with the opposition. But South Africa gave no indication Friday that it would go as far as the United States wanted.

By Mary Beth Sheridan, The Washington Post, August 8, 2009

NAIROBI, Aug. 6 -- At a spirited town hall meeting at the University of Nairobi on Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called it "a great regret" that the United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court, an institution that has long been treated warily by the Pentagon.

A student asked the secretary how the United States could support having the court intervene in Kenya's problems when the U.S. government has not subjected itself to its procedures.

Clinton said it is "a great regret, but it is a fact" that the U.S. government is not a member of the court. "But we have supported the court and continue to do so," she added.

"I think we could have worked out some of the challenges that are raised concerning our membership by our own government, but that has not yet come to pass," she said.

In December 2000, Clinton's husband, then-President Bill Clinton, signed the treaty that set up the International Criminal Court, despite what he called "concerns about significant flaws." But he did not submit it to Congress for ratification. Months later, the Bush administration in effect withdrew that signature. The Obama administration has not made any move to join the court.

The Pentagon has long worried that the international war crimes court could unfairly target U.S. military personnel around the world. Some legal experts, however, say the U.S. government had won important concessions to ensure protection of American service members.

The Kenyan government and opposition have agreed to allow the court to prosecute people accused of participating in violence after a disputed election in December 2007, although the cases could also be referred to a special Kenyan tribunal.

By Mary Beth Sheridan, The Washington Post, August 7, 2009

CULLINAN, South Africa - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to rebuild American relations with South Africa on Friday after years of frustration over the nation's approach to issues like AIDS and the crisis in Zimbabwe.

Promising to "broaden and deepen" American ties to South Africa, the continent's economic and political powerhouse, she said the two countries would "work together to build a global architecture of cooperation."

But she also made clear her disapproval of the nation's past policies on AIDS, which have been widely criticized as lagging behind science and allowing the premature deaths of hundreds of thousands of people through government inaction.

"We have to make up for lost time," she said at an American-financed AIDS clinic here.

South Africa is stop No. 2 on Mrs. Clinton's seven-nation tour of Africa, and a big part of her visit here seems to be about mending fences. South Africa's previous president, Thabo Mbeki, questioned the link between H.I.V. and AIDS, which deeply discouraged American officials who saw his nation as a crucial battleground over the disease. Nearly one out of five South African adults is H.I.V. positive.

Mr. Mbeki also refused to take a hard line against Zimbabwe, South Africa's neighbor, which has sunk into despair under the autocratic rule of its president, Robert Mugabe. Beyond that, the United States has been irked by South Africa's attempts to tone down or prevent United Nations action against Myanmar, a notorious human rights violator.

The American-South Africa "relationship was fraught with far more difficulty than the previous administration was willing to acknowledge," said an aide to Mrs. Clinton, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We had little access and even less influence."

But with new administrations in both South Africa and the United States, there seemed to be a new spirit of cooperation on Friday, or at least a lot of talk about it. Mrs. Clinton called South Africa the "economic anchor of Africa" and praised the nation's strong financial sector, which she said had mostly escaped the credit crunch that plagued much of the rest of the world. "Frankly, we could learn a lot from your example," Mrs. Clinton said at a business leader luncheon.

But the South Africans were vague about exactly what they might do differently after her visit. South Africa's foreign minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said, "We promised to continue to work with the people of Zimbabwe to implement the agreement that they signed," referring to an awkward power-sharing agreement Mr. Mugabe struck with Zimbabwe's opposition after a bloody election season last year.

And compared with Kenya, where thousands of people lined the street just to catch a glimpse of Mrs. Clinton ducking into her armored Chrysler, the public reaction to her arrival in South Africa was decidedly cooler.

It was hard to find stories about the visit in local newspapers, and at the business luncheon where she spoke, there were dozens of empty seats. Mrs. Clinton's aides also confided that there were complications trying to arrange a meeting with South Africa's new president, Jacob Zuma. The two are scheduled to meet Saturday, but the Clinton entourage will have to detour several hundred miles to Durban, on the Indian Ocean Coast, to see him.

On Friday morning, Mrs. Clinton visited the father figure of post-apartheid South Africa and a hero across the world, Nelson Mandela. It was not so much an official act as a time to see an old friend. Mr. Mandela, 91, is no longer actively engaged in African affairs, as he was during Bill Clinton's presidency, when he and the Clintons grew close. According to a person who witnessed the visit, he was frail and quiet as Mrs. Clinton chatted with him, holding his hand.

As the sun was sinking and the hills were darkening, Mrs. Clinton stood shoulder to shoulder with two patients at the AIDS clinic here. "When I first found out my status, I felt my world was collapsing on top of me," said Simangele Ncube. "But look at me today. I stand in front of you a beautiful woman. The virus is not written in my face. But I am H.I.V. positive."

Mrs. Clinton seemed almost too moved to speak and nodded solemnly.

NAIROBI, Kenya - Somalia's beleaguered transitional government received desperately needed support on Thursday as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton praised its president as "the best hope we've had for some time," then strongly warned Eritrea to stop supporting insurgents in the country.

Mrs. Clinton met with Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, elected Somalia's president in January, for more than an hour. She promised more aid, training and equipment, in addition to the millions of dollars' worth of weapons the United States has recently shipped to his government.

"We need to be there to help them deliver the results of stability to the people of Somalia, who have suffered for so long," Mrs. Clinton said.

Sheik Sharif can use the help. His moderate Islamist government controls no more than a few city blocks in a country the size of Texas, with extremist Islamist groups, like the Shabab, in charge of much of the rest.

Mrs. Clinton said the battle for Somalia, which has been the lawless home to Islamist extremists, terrorists, gun runners, drug smugglers, teenage gunmen and even modern-day pirates for the past 18 years, is deeply connected to American interests.

"No doubt that Al Shabab wants to obtain control over Somalia and use it as a base to influence and infiltrate surrounding countries," she said. "If Al Shabab were to obtain a haven in Somalia which could then attract Al Qaeda and other terrorist actors, it would be a threat to the United States.”

Thursday was the second full day of Mrs. Clinton's seven-nation Africa tour, intended to shore up support for America's allies on the continent and to give Mrs. Clinton, who has played a relatively subdued role early in the Obama administration, an opportunity to put her stamp on American foreign policy.

She warned of unspecified consequences for Eritrea if it continued what she said was its support for Al Shabab and its efforts to destabilize Somalia. "It's long past time for Eritrea to cease and desist its support for Al Shabab," she said. "We intend to take action if they do not cease."

American leaders have made this threat before, though usually not in such direct language. Eritrea continues to deny any links to Somali militants, though that is hard to verify, as Eritrea is a highly secretive, tightly controlled nation with few allies.

Sheik Sharif seemed to bask in the attention. He stood riveted at a lectern next to Mrs. Clinton at an end-of-the-day news conference, wearing a crisp blue suit, an Islamic prayer hat and a lapel pin of joined Somali and American flags.

Before saying goodbye, he vigorously shook Mrs. Clinton's hand - which caught the eye of one Somali journalist, who asked the president if that was religiously forbidden.

"No, no," Sheik Sharif said and flashed a nervous grin. "Next question?"

American officials are clearly hoping that Sheik Sharif, a former religious teacher who rose to popularity in Somalia by helping rescue kidnapped children, will emerge as the man who can finally put this bullet-pocked country back together.

An aide to Mrs. Clinton described him as "intelligent, thoughtful and honest."

The aide, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Sheik Sharif’s greatest strength was, in a way, also his greatest weakness.

"He's not a warlord," the aide said. "So he's had to work harder to bring together a security force. But he's shown the ability to lead. And he's shown the ability to survive."

Mrs. Clinton's trip has been the usual mix of meetings, speeches and quick, tightly scripted visits with everyday people. On Thursday morning, she toured the site where the American Embassy to Kenya was destroyed in 1998 by a huge truck bomb, in an attack later claimed by Al Qaeda. The attack leveled several buildings in downtown Nairobi, killing more than 200 people and wounding thousands, mostly impoverished Kenyans. Many people were blinded by flying glass.

Mrs. Clinton quietly laid a wreath at the foot of a plaque commemorating the people killed that day, and she told a group of Kenyan survivors, including an old blind man leaning on a cane, "We will continue to work with you." Many victims have complained that the United States abandoned them after the attack.

One boy, Michael Macharia, 14, trailed closely behind Mrs. Clinton for most of her visit to the bomb site. Both his parents were working in the same building that day and were killed together when the bomb exploded. Mrs. Clinton said that Michael, who is being raised by his grandparents, was doing well in school and that she would tell President Obama about "his incredible character."

Michael bowed his head bashfully, and later, when asked how it felt to be recognized by the American secretary of state, said, "It's good."

Mrs. Clinton, seeming to grow increasingly frustrated with Kenya's leaders, said that if the Kenyan government refused to set up a tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators of last year's election-driven bloodshed, the International Criminal Court at The Hague would get involved.

"I have urged that the Kenyan government find the way forward themselves," she said. "But if not, then the names turned over to the I.C.C. will be opened, and an investigation will begin."

In July, Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, handed a sealed envelope with a list of prime suspects to the International Criminal Court. The court has also recently threatened to intervene if Kenyan leaders decide to continue the country's stubborn history of impunity.

More than 1,000 people were killed around the country when the disputed December 2007 presidential election set off ethnic and political fighting. Initially, much of the violence seemed like spontaneous outrage vented along ethnic lines, though later it became evident that it had been at least partly organized by local leaders and village elders, and possibly by higher authorities.

By Jeffrey Gettleman, The New York Times, August 6, 2009