ISLAMABAD - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders over the weekend to push ahead with flagging efforts to restart peace talks, the State Department said Thursday.

Clinton, along with the Obama administration's special Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell, will see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas separately at locations in the region that have yet to be determined, the department said.

"Her visit reflects the administration's commitment - and her personal commitment - to work through the challenges we face in pursuit of comprehensive Middle East peace," spokesman P.J. Crowley said in a statement.

Clinton reported last week to President Barack Obama that Mitchell had made little progress. Crowley noted that "challenges remain as we continue to work with both sides."

He said the talks would take place ahead of meetings Clinton has scheduled with Arab foreign ministers in Morocco early next week.

"The administration is committed to comprehensive peace, including a two-state solution," he said.

In the Afghan capital, Kabul, Taliban militants stormed a guesthouse, killing five United Nations employees and three other people in a furious two-hour siege. The attack was meant to scare Afghans away from voting in a runoff election on Nov. 7 between President Hamid Karzai and his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, a Taliban spokesman said.

The violence cast a shadow over the visit of Mrs. Clinton, who was meeting with government ministers in Islamabad, 90 miles southwest of Peshawar, when news of the Peshawar explosion came over television screens. Mrs. Clinton immediately condemned the bombing, which in killing women and children in Peshawar seemed aimed at the very constituencies she has championed in her travels to other developing countries.

"These attacks on innocent people are cowardly; they are not courageous, they are cowardly," Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference with the Pakistani foreign minister, her voice raw with anger.

"They know they are on the losing side of history," she said of the militants. "But they are determined to take as many lives with them as their movement is finally exposed for the nihilistic, empty effort it is."

In a vivid tableau, some television stations broadcast Mrs. Clinton's remarks on a split screen - one half showing her speaking, the other half dominated by plumes of gray smoke and flames from the blast.

While there was no evidence that the attacks were coordinated, they may be traced to Taliban factions based in Pakistan's tribal areas, where Pakistani Army forces have taken on a widening campaign against the militants.

Responsibility for the Kabul attacks, which included rockets fired at the five-star Serena Hotel, was claimed by an Afghan Taliban faction led by Siraj Haqqani, who uses his base in North Waziristan, along the Afghan border, to organize an insurgency against American and NATO forces.

"This is a very dark day for the U.N. in Afghanistan," said Kai Eide, the United Nations special representative to Afghanistan. He said officials of the organization would review "whether other appropriate measures need to be taken to protect all our staff."

No one claimed responsibility for the Peshawar bombing, but the authorities said it appeared to be another in a series of attacks by Pakistani Taliban militants to answer the military's offensive against their stronghold in South Waziristan.

Since the military moved into the region this month, the Pakistani Taliban have shifted their attacks from suicide bombings aimed at security installations and Western targets to more powerful and more indiscriminate bombings in urban centers intended to kill large numbers of Pakistani civilians.

"The militants want to destabilize the government and intimidate the public," Mehmood Shah, a retired brigadier and defense analyst based in Peshawar, told the Geo news network. As long as the military operation continues, he added, "We can expect such attacks to carry on."

A senior intelligence official blamed Taliban militants based in Darra Adamkhel for the attack. "We had an intercept last week that spoke of a 'heart-rending' attack in Peshawar," the official said, requesting he not be identified. The militants, he said, spoke of carrying out the attack to "unnerve" the government. "This explains why they are now targeting civilians," he said.

At a dinner for Mrs. Clinton, President Asif Ali Zardari characterized the violence as an attack on Pakistan's way of life and said there was no choice but to strike back.

Mrs. Clinton praised the Pakistani military for its campaign against insurgents in South Waziristan, saying: "I want you to know that this fight is not Pakistan's alone. This is our struggle as well."

She responded to criticism here that the United States had drawn down its forces in the Afghan border region, allowing more extremists to flow into Pakistan. The complaint reversed familiar American demands that Pakistan do more to stem the flow of insurgents into Afghanistan. The Pentagon, she insisted, has put more forces in that region, but has consolidated its border outposts into fewer, larger posts.

For all the talk of security, Mrs. Clinton stuck to her goal of trying to broaden the relationship between Pakistan and the United States. She announced a new American-financed energy program that would help Pakistan repair and upgrade its aging power plants to cut down on power failures. The United States will contribute $125 million to the first phase of the program.

Mrs. Clinton tied the program to a broader American effort to improve the lives of Pakistanis.

"For months, families have endured sweltering heat and evenings spent in the dark, without appliances or televisions or computers," she said, adding that "blackouts prompt an increase in crime."

That observation seemed almost quaint on a day when Pakistan was convulsed in a crime wave of a different magnitude.

The attack in Peshawar was not a total surprise, according to Pakistani and American officials. A representative of a shopkeepers association in Peshawar said that he and others had received demands from militants in recent days to ban women from shopping in the market.

The car bomb exploded between two narrow lanes of Meena Bazaar and Kochi Bazaar, an area frequented by female shoppers. Most of the bodies were charred and mutilated beyond recognition.

Hospital officials said 87 bodies had been brought from the scene, where as many as three clusters of shops on narrow lanes and passageways collapsed, and fires raged out of control. Three hours after the explosion, people were still trying to dig bodies and survivors out, witnesses said.

Sahibzada Anees, the deputy coordination officer in Peshawar, said the city was poorly equipped to cope with such a large-scale attack. It does not have enough trained firefighters and could not move excavators into the narrow streets to rescue those buried in the rubble, she said.

At the colonial-era Lady Reading Hospital, medics were overwhelmed by the casualties.

"We don't even have time to count the bodies," said an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of government rules.

ISLAMABAD - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is suggesting that Pakistan's government has squandered chances to kill or capture al-Qaida leaders.

She made the remark in an interview Thursday with Pakistani journalists during a trip to the city of Lahore. She later flew to the capital, Islamabad, for talks with army chief and additional meetings.

Clinton said al-Qaida has used Pakistan as a haven since 2002. She said she finds it hard to believe that nobody in Pakistan's government knows where the leaders of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network are hiding.

She also said she finds it hard to believe that Pakistani authorities couldn't "get them" if they wanted to.

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

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that Pakistan had little choice but to take a more aggressive approach to combating the Pakistani Taliban and other insurgents that threaten to destabilize the country.

With the country reeling from Wednesday's devastating bombing that killed at least 105 people in Peshawar, Clinton engaged in an intense give-and-take with students at the Government College of Lahore, insisting that inaction by the government would have ceded ground to terrorists.

"If you want to see your territory shrink, that's your choice," she said, adding that she believed it would be a bad choice.

Dozens of students rushed to line up for the microphone when the session began. Their questions were not hostile, but showed a strong sense of doubt that the U.S. can be a reliable and trusted partner for Pakistan.

Clinton met with the students on the second day of a three-day visit to Pakistan, her first as secretary of state. The Peshawar bombing, set off in a market crowded with women and children, appeared timed to overshadow her arrival. It was the deadliest attack in Pakistan since 2007.

Clinton likened Pakistan's situation - with Taliban forces taking over substantial swaths of land in the Swat valley and in areas along the Afghan border - to a theoretical advance of terrorists into the United States from across the Canadian border.

It would be unthinkable, she said, for the U.S. government to decide, "Let them have Washington (state)" first, then Montana, then the sparsely populated Dakotas, because those states are far from the major centers of population and power on the East Coast.

Clinton was responding to a student who suggested that Washington was forcing Pakistan to use military force on its own territory. It was one of several questions from the students that raised doubts about the relationship between the United States and Pakistan.

During her hour-long appearance at the college, Clinton stressed that a key purpose of her three-day visit to Pakistan, which began Wednesday, was to reach out to ordinary Pakistanis and urge a better effort to bridge differences and improve mutual understanding.

"We are now at a point where we can chart a different course," she said, referring to past differences over an absence of democracy in Pakistan and Pakistani association with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

As a way of repudiating past U.S. policies toward Pakistan, Clinton told the students "there is a huge difference" between the Obama administration's approach and that of former President George W. Bush.

"I spent my entire eight years in the Senate opposing him," she said to a burst of applause from the audience of several hundred students. "So, to me, it's like daylight and dark."

Although Clinton said she was making a priority of engaging frankly and openly on her visit, she declined to talk about a subject that has stirred some of the strongest feelings of anti-Americanism here - U.S. drone aircraft attacks against extremist targets on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border.

The Obama administration routinely refuses to acknowledge publicly that the attacks are taking place.

"There is a war going on," she said, and the U.S. wants to help Pakistan be successful.

The drone attacks have killed a number of Pakistani civilians, while also reportedly succeeding in eliminating some high-level Taliban and other extremist group leaders.

At the same time, though, the U.S. has been providing Pakistani commanders with video images and target information from its military drones as Pakistan's army pushes its ground offensive in Waziristan, U.S. officials said earlier this week.

Also sensitive is the way the U.S. has handled millions of dollars in aid to the Pakistani military. The U.S. in recent months has rushed helicopters and other military equipment to the country as Islamabad has launched its counterinsurgency offensives in Swat Valley and South Waziristan.

The administration sped the delivery of 10 Mi-17 troop transport helicopters starting in June, and in July sent 200 night vision goggles, nearly more than 9,000 sets of body armor, several hundred radios and other equipment.

"We've put military assistance to Pakistan on a wartime footing," Lt. Col. Mark Wright, a Pentagon spokesman, said Thursday. "We are doing everything within our power to assist Pakistan in improving its counterinsurgency capability."

This year the Pentagon plans to spend more than $500 million on arms and equipment for Islamabad as well as training Pakistan's military in counterinsurgency tactics. Still, Pakistani officials last month complained that Congress attached too many conditions to the surge in aid.

Before flying to Lahore from Islamabad, Clinton visited the Bari Imam shrine, named after Shah Abdul Latif Kazmi, a 17th century Sufi saint who died in 1705 and later came to be known as the patron saint of Islamabad. A suicide bomber struck the shrine in May 2005, killing a number of people.

It is extremely rare for an official of Mrs. Clinton's rank to say publicly what American politicians and intelligence officials have said in more guarded ways for years. The remarks upset her hosts, who have seen hundreds of soldiers and civilians killed as Pakistan has taken on a widening campaign against militant groups that have threatened the country from its tribal areas.

But her skeptical comments also gave voice to the longtime frustration of American officials with what they see as the Pakistani government's lack of resolve in rooting out not only Al Qaeda, but also the Taliban leadership based in Quetta, and a host of militant groups that use the border region to stage attacks on American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Mrs. Clintons statement was only one of several pointed remarks on issues ranging from security to poor tax collection during a day in which she ran into a wall of distrust and mostly hostile questioning in public appearances intended to soothe relations, suggesting she was no longer willing merely to listen to Pakistan's grievances.

The shift in tone came after a meeting with university students in which she expressed regret about past injustices in the American-Pakistani relationship, as well as about the disputed American presidential election in 2000, which she said showed that all democracies were flawed.

"We have to decide if we want to move beyond the past in your country and in our country," Mrs. Clinton said. "We are now at a point where we can chart a different course."

Rarely in her travels as secretary of state has Mrs. Clinton encountered an audience so uniformly suspicious and immune to her star power as the polite, but unsmiling, university students who challenged her at Government College University in Lahore.

One after another, they lined up to grill Mrs. Clinton about what they see as the dysfunctional relationship between Pakistan and the United States. They described a litany of slights, betrayals and misunderstandings that add up to a national narrative of grievance, against which she did her best to push back.

Why did the United States abandon Pakistan after the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, they asked. Why did the Bush administration support the previous military government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf? What about reports in the Pakistani news media that American contractors illegally carried weapons in Islamabad?

In a later exchange with American journalists, Mrs. Clinton did not try to temper her remarks, saying they would contribute to a healthier, more open relationship with Pakistan. But the American ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, sought to put them in a broader context of efforts to persuade the government to root out militants in its frontier regions.

"We often say there needs to be a focus on finding these leaders," Ms. Patterson said. "Most of Al Qaeda is in South Waziristan," she added, referring to the frontier area near Afghanistan where the Pakistani Army is conducting a campaign against militants.

Mrs. Clinton's comments were prominently played on Pakistani news channels, and government officials rejected her assertion.

"If we knew where Al Qaeda's leaders were, or if we had meaningful intelligence on their whereabouts shared with us, we would act against them," said a senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on this issue.

At times during this three-day visit, Mrs. Clinton has sounded less like a diplomat than a marriage counselor. But her soothing approach has won her few friends. She got tepid applause from the students here, some of whom groaned when she defended American policies.

Two weeks ago, by contrast, Mrs. Clinton challenged the Russian government to open up its political system, allow more dissent and strengthen its legal system, in a speench at Moscow State University. She got an enthusiastic standing ovation from the nearly 2,000 students.

Here, even her fans came armed with spears. A young female medical student thanked Mrs. Clinton for being an inspiration to women, then asked her how the United States could justify ordering Predator strikes on targets in Pakistan without sharing intelligence with its military.

Mrs. Clinton declined to comment on the program, which is run by the Central Intelligence Agency. But she said, "The war that your government and your military are waging right now is an important one for the country."

The Obama administration's aggressive support for Pakistan's campaign in South Waziristan has put Mrs. Clinton in a delicate position. She has praised the army at every opportunity, while expressing regret for the wave of terrorist attacks the campaign has set off across the country, like the fiery car bomb that killed more than 100 people in the northwest city of Peshawar hours after her arrival on Wednesday.

Despite heightened security concerns, Mrs. Clinton stuck to her schedule, traveling to Lahore to meet opposition leaders and tour the majestic Badshahi Mosque, as thousands of police officers lined the route of her motorcade, shutting down the center of this city of 10 million.

At the university, a young man said that President Obama had failed to fix policies on Iraq or detainees, and told Mrs. Clinton that the United States was forcing Pakistan into a ruinous war.

Mrs. Clinton noted that the government had decided to fight only after its efforts to cut a deal with militants failed. "Slowly, but insidiously, you were losing territory," she said. "If you want to see your territory shrink, that's your choice. But I don't think that's the right choice."

Those comments, made at the end of the meeting, set the stage for Mrs. Clinton's feisty appearance later in the day.

At a roundtable session with businesspeople, Mrs. Clinton bluntly told an all-male audience that Pakistan needed to do a better job of collecting taxes and taking care of its poor. "When you ask for a partnership, you have to ask what Pakistan's equity stake is," she said.

Listening patiently to a litany of grievances from journalists about American policies, Mrs. Clinton said, "I am more than willing to hear every complaint about the United States." But she said the relationship had to be a "two-way street."

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton came here to tell Pakistanis that the United States sought a relationship built on more than fighting terrorism. Hours after her arrival, the horrific car-bomb attack in Peshawar showed why this will be an uphill battle.

Mrs. Clinton condemned the attack in Peshawar, about two hours from Islamabad by car. The bomb tore through a fabric market, killing as many as 101 people, many of them women and children - groups Mrs. Clinton champions in her travels to other developing countries.

"These attacks on innocent people are cowardly; they are not courageous, they are cowardly," Mrs. Clinton said, grimly drawing out her pronunciation of cowardly. "If the people behind these attacks were so sure of their beliefs, let them join the political process."

"They know they are on the losing side of history," she said, speaking at a news conference with Pakistan's foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi. "But they are determined to take as many lives with them as their movement is finally exposed for the nihilistic, empty effort it is."

Mrs. Clinton praised the Pakistani military for its campaign against insurgents in South Waziristan, saying: "I want you to know that this fight is not Pakistan's alone. This is our struggle as well.:

For his part, Mr. Qureshi sounded a defiant note, saying the bombing would not weaken Pakistan's resolve to combat extremism.

"We will not buckle; we will fight you," he said, addressing the attackers. "You think that by attacking innocent people and lives, you will shake our determination. No sir, you will not."

Mrs. Clinton went ahead with an announcement planned as the centerpiece of her first day in Islamabad: an American-financed initiative to help Pakistan repair and upgrade its aging power plants. The program consists of six projects, including the repair of 11,000 agricultural pumps for electricity transmission and the upgrading of a hydroelectric plant on the Indus River. The United States is dedicating $125 million for the first phase.

The initiative, negotiated by the State Department's new energy coordinator, David Goldwyn, is meant to reduce the power failures that afflict Pakistan's major cities.

"Pakistan's energy shortfall poses serious challenges to your economy and to the lives of individual people and businesses," Mrs. Clinton said.

Indeed, power failures regularly plunge millions of people here into darkness. A large part of the problem is that power distribution companies here lose almost a third of the electricity they buy because of mismanagement, customer defaults and decrepit equipment.

Mrs. Clinton tied the program to a broader American effort to better the lives of ordinary Pakistanis.

"For months, families have endured sweltering heat and evenings spent in the dark, without appliances or televisions or computers," she said, adding that "blackouts prompt an increase in crime."

"Without power, some factories and small businesses have closed their doors, which undermines economic growth," Mrs. Clinton said. "And America wants to help."

Hillary Rodham Clinton's first trip to Pakistan as secretary of state was never going to be easy. The day she arrived, extremists detonated a car bomb at a crowded market in Peshawar that killed at least 100 people. The Nation newspaper dismissed the visit as a mere "PR exercise, but who will buy what the US is selling is difficult to imagine, beyond the already compliant government."

Polls show that an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis dislike and mistrust the United States. They blame Washington for using and then abandoning them after the Soviets were driven from Afghanistan. And they resent Washington for pressing their government now to fight against extremists - and suspect that they will be abandoned again. The fact that many of the extremists are on Pakistan's territory and threatening Pakistan's government has not shifted that thinking or mitigated that resentment.

A good part of this, of course, is the failure of Pakistan's government, which has still not adequately explained that this is not just America's fight. But the United States is also to blame. For eight years the Bush administration coddled the Pakistani Army at the expense of the rest of society.

Mrs. Clinton challenged Pakistan's government to do more to shut down Al Qaeda, but she was, rightly, determined to use this visit to also broaden the relationship.

Instead of just courting President Asif Ali Zardari and the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Mrs. Clinton also held talks with the top opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif; parried questions from an audience of deeply suspicious college students; met with civil society leaders, including women and Pashtun elders; gave interviews to Pakistani journalists; and visited religious and cultural sights.

She promised to refocus American aid on the "needs of the people" and announced targeted commitments, including $85 million for microloans for poor women to start businesses and $125 million for the first phase of an electricity project aimed at reducing blackouts and improving energy conservation.

Those grants are welcome but still small change when compared with a five-year, $7.5 billion - nonmilitary - aid package approved by Congress and signed into law this year. That package was supposed to demonstrate to Pakistanis that, this time, the United States is in it for the long haul. Instead, it has become another focus of popular resentment. The Army and some Pakistani news media whipped that up with disingenuous complaints that the legislation (Islamabad was consulted beforehand) compromised Pakistan's sovereignty by conditioning disbursement on adequate civilian control of the military.

If Washington is ever to enlist Pakistan as a reliable ally, it is going to have to do a much better job of explaining itself. And it is going to have to insist that Pakistan's leaders start explaining the real stakes to their citizens and the real benefits of an alliance with the United States. Mrs. Clinton's trip was an important start - but only a start.

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed doubt Thursday over Pakistan's failure to locate top al-Qaeda leaders in the eight years since they escaped over the border from Afghanistan, telling a group of Pakistani journalists that she found "it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to."

"So far as we know," she said, "they're in Pakistan."

Clinton's comments, the most direct public statement of a U.S. argument long made in private, came as she tried to balance assurances of strong economic and military support for Pakistan with reminders that the relationship is a "two-way street."

"If we are going to have a mature partnership where we work together," she said, "then there are issues that not just the United States, but others have with your government and your military establishment."

Clinton, who made her comments during a day-long trip to the eastern city of Lahore, later met with the country's top military and intelligence officials.

After her three-day visit to Pakistan ends Friday, Clinton plans to travel to the Middle East over the weekend for hastily arranged meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, her second trip to the region as secretary of state.

Special U.S. envoy George J. Mitchell will meet Clinton in Jerusalem on Saturday, officials said, but there is little expectation of a major breakthrough in moving the Israelis and Palestinians toward direct talks by the end of the year. At the very least, the stop may provide some progress to report to Arab leaders at a conference the secretary plans to attend Monday in Morocco.

With Clinton's visit focused on "people-to-people" ties, the secretary was said to have resisted meeting with the military. But the military's importance in Pakistan's politics -- and the opportunity for a real-time progress report on the offensive as the administration reaches the final stages of its Afghanistan war strategy review -- was said to have persuaded her.

Officials traveling with Clinton expressed overall satisfaction with the trip, which has been an exercise in message calibration. A powerful explosion in the northwestern city of Peshawar, which killed at least 100 people, coincided with her arrival here Wednesday. In meetings with government officials and in public appearances, she praised the army's ongoing offensive, bemoaned what she called misunderstandings over congressional conditions imposed on U.S. military and economic aid to Pakistan, and pledged American respect for Pakistani culture and traditions.

She began her Lahore trip Thursday morning with a wreath-laying and a tour of the 17th-century Badshahi Mosque, a behemoth of red sandstone and marble.

Clinton held a working lunch with political opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister, and his brother Shahbaz, the chief minister of Punjab province, and met with civil society leaders.

At a town hall meeting with university students, she parried critical questions about the aid conditions and U.S. drone missile attacks on insurgent sanctuaries in the western border areas, and said the U.S.-Pakistan relationship was strong -- and growing.

"That is one of the reasons I'm here today," Clinton said. "I do not want anyone, anywhere in the world -- particularly in my own country -- to have any misunderstanding about the people of Pakistan and the abilities, talents and positive contributions of the people of Pakistan."

In an unusually blunt statement during her trip to Pakistan, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton questioned the Pakistani government's inability to find Al Qaeda.

The Times of India reports that during a press conference with Pakistani reporters, Mrs. Clinton noted that Al Qaeda has been hiding in Pakistan since 2002, and said she found it "hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to."

After having publicly doubted the bona fides of her hosts, she added, as an afterthought: "Maybe that's the case; maybe they're not gettable.... I don't know. As far as we know, they are in Pakistan." At one point during the exchanges, when a journalist spoke about all the services rendered by Pakistan for the US, Mrs Clinton snapped, "We have also given you billions."

The US Secretary of State also took a swipe at the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies, telling the senior journalists, "If we are going to have a mature partnership where we work together," then "there are issues that not just the United States but others have with your government and with your military security establishment." She said she was "more than willing to hear every complaint about the United States,'' but the relationship had to be a "two-way street."

Clinton's comments are particularly noteworthy because her visit to Pakistan was meant to be a "fence-mending tour," the Los Angeles Times writes, and Pakistan is currently engaged in a military campaign against Taliban forces in South Waziristan.

Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations said he was surprised that Clinton would raise the issue of Pakistan's efforts on Al Qaeda, given the current fragility of the civilian government.

"It seems like an odd time to come in and send this one across the bow," said Markey, a former State Department official just returned from a trip to Pakistan. ...

A Pakistani official predicted that Clinton's comments would make some people in Pakistan angry, "some perhaps violently so." But he said that in his view, Clinton's candor was a sign that the relationship was maturing.

The Los Angeles Times also cites a US official who said that Clinton's statements were not prepared statements, but rather reflected her own heartfelt concerns about Al Qaeda and Pakistan. "You've got to remember, she was a senator from New York on 9/11," the official told the Times.

Clinton's concerns were underscored by reports that Pakistani forces in South Waziristan have found documents, including a German passport, believed to belong to Said Bahaji, an associate of 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta. The New York Times reports that Mr. Bahaji, who US officials believe is a senior propagandist for Al Qaeda, was a member of the German terrorist cell that helped plan the 9/11 attacks, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. The report describes Bahaji as "an insecure follower with no personality and with limited knowledge of Islam," and says that he was not a central plotter of the 9/11 attacks.

During her Pakistan tour, Clinton also attended "an intense give-and-take" with students at the Government College of Lahore, reports PakTribune. The students had criticized the relationship between the US and Pakistan, and one complained that the US was forcing Pakistan to fight the Taliban in its sovereign territory.

Clinton likened Pakistan's situation with Taliban forces to a theoretical advance of terrorists into the United States from across the Canadian border.

It would be unthinkable, she said, for the US government to decide "let them have Washington (state)" first, then Montana, then the sparsely populated Dakotas, because those states are far from the major centres of population and power on the East Coast....

Clinton urged Pakistan's youth to stand firm against the forces of religious extremism, saying it threatened everything that both Americans and Pakistanis hold dear. She said, "Though the terror war is being fought on your (Pakistan) land, but it is not Pakistan's war alone; Pakistan is fighting on the front and the US stands by it." She observed if peace was restored between Pakistan and India and their mutual disputes were resolved, Pakistan would take off as a rocket in terms of economic development.

Clinton spent Friday, her final day in Pakistan, talking to tribal leaders from Pakistan's troubled northwestern territories, Agence France-Presse reports.

By Arthur Bright, The Christian Science Monitor, October 30, 2009

LAHORE, Pakistan - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that Pakistan had little choice but to take a more aggressive approach, starting last summer, to combatting Taliban and other extremist forces that threaten to destabilize the country.

In a lively give-and-take with students at the Government College of Lahore, Clinton said inaction by the government would have amounted to ceding ground to terrorists.

"If you want to see your territory shrink, that's your choice," she said, adding that she believed it would be a bad choice.

Clinton likened Pakistan's situation - with Taliban forces taking over substantial swaths of land in the Swat valley and in areas along the Afghan border - to a theoretical advance of terrorists into the United States from across the Canadian border. It would be unthinkable, she said, for the U.S. government to decide, "Let them have Washington (state)" first, then Montana, then the sparsely populated Dakotas, because those states are far from the major centers of population and power on the East Coast.

Clinton was responding to a student who suggested that Washington was forcing Pakistan to use military force on its own territory. It was one of several questions from the students that raised doubts about the relationship between the United States and Pakistan.

During her hour-long appearance at the college, Clinton stressed that a key purpose of her three-day visit to Pakistan, which began Wednesday, was to reach out to ordinary Pakistanis and urge a better effort to bridge differences and improve mutual understanding.

"We are now at a point where we can chart a different course," she said, referring to past differences over an absence of democracy in Pakistan and Pakistani association with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Although Clinton said she was making a priority of engaging frankly and openly on her visit, she declined to talk about a subject that has stirred some of the strongest feelings of anti-Americanism here - U.S. drone aircraft attacks against extremist targets on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border. The Obama administration routinely refuses to acknowledge publicly that the attacks are taking place.

"There is a war going on," she said, and the U.S. wants to help Pakistan be successful.

The drone attacks have killed a number of Pakistani civilians, while also reportedly succeeding in eliminating some high-level Taliban and other extremist group leaders.

Before flying to Lahore from Islamabad, Clinton visited the Bari Imam shrine, named after Shah Abdul Latif Kazmi, a 17th century Sufi saint who died in 1705 and later came to be known as the patron saint of Islamabad. A suicide bomber struck the shrine in May 2005, killing a number of people.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton landed here Wednesday, saying she was determined to broaden America's relationship with Pakistan beyond the security and anti-terrorism concerns that have dominated ties and sowed mutual suspicion.

Mrs. Clinton's three-day mission, conducted under an extraordinary security blanket, may be the greatest test yet of her skills as a messenger of American good will to an often-suspicious world.

It comes at a tense moment in Pakistani-American relations, in the wake of a furor over an American aid package that many Pakistanis say intrudes on their country's sovereignty, and in the heat of a military offensive in South Waziristan, which the United States encouraged, but that has set off terrorist attacks across the country.

The attacks and the aid package, which places some requirements on the government that have angered the military, have stoked already growing anti-American sentiments that have even spread to the country's elite.

"It is unfortunate that there are those who question our motives, who perhaps are skeptical that we are going to commit to a long-term relationship," Mrs. Clinton said to reporters traveling with her to Pakistan. "I want to try to clear the air on that while I'm in the country."

To that end, Mrs. Clinton is plunging into personal diplomacy of the kind she has practiced from Moscow to Mexico City, but rarely in such a combustible place. The visit will take her out of the protected cocoon of government ministries in Islamabad, the capital, to Lahore, where she is to take part in a town-hall meeting with university students that one aide said would be "no holds barred."

Last week, two suicide bombers attacked an Islamic university in Islamabad, killing eight people and leading the authorities to close all educational institutions in the country for several days to bolster their security.

Mrs. Clinton will also meet with Pashtun elders from South Waziristan and other tribal regions where Taliban insurgents have made the greatest inroads. And she will submit to a battery of interviews with Pakistani journalists, who are likely to be skeptical of her message of friendship and support.

She said she was realistic about how many minds she could change given that the administration had had little time to heal old wounds. "There's just a lot of scar tissue," she said.

Mrs. Clinton applauded the military's campaign in South Waziristan, though she acknowledged the fears of Pakistanis that the bloodshed would continue to ripple into Pakistan's major population centers. In the last 12 days, more than 160 people have been killed in terrorist attacks by militants, including the shooting last week of a Pakistani brigadier on a street in Islamabad.

"I think it's important for Americans and others to recognize the high price that Pakistanis are paying," she said. "Too often, people outside of Pakistan don't know, or don't acknowledge," how hard the battle is.

Despite Mrs. Clinton's conciliatory statements, many American officials remain deeply skeptical of Pakistan's commitment to eliminating the militants operating on its soil, some of whom it has used over the years to fight India.

Mrs. Clinton's encounters with local journalists will be closely watched because American and Pakistani officials say the media fomented the objections to the $7.5 billion aid package, which included requirements by Congress to ensure that there was adequate civilian control over the military in Pakistan.

Mrs. Clinton defended the aid as "a commitment we are putting forth to demonstrate our good will toward the Pakistani people." She added, "It doesn't help when we do something like this, and people question our motives."

Mrs. Clinton will meet with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani, and she is expected to see the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, though on this trip her formal meetings may be less important than the private encounters.

Mrs. Clinton's media blitz began even before she left Washington. She conducted taped interviews with two Pakistani TV programs, in which she spoke effusively of her friendships with Pakistanis, some going back to college days, and her love for Pakistani food and fashion.

"I love the food, I wear shalwar kameezes," she said to Dawn TV, referring to the traditional loose-fitting Pakistani shirt. "I mean, give me a seekh kebab and some gow, and I'll be a happy person."

So great is her taste for the food, Mrs. Clinton said, that she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, used to have friends bring Pakistani food to the White House when they visited.

Behind her embrace of all things Pakistani is a message: after eight years of the Bush administration, during which suspicions between the countries hardened, Pakistan has true friends in the administration, starting with her and President Obama, who she said also had ties to Pakistanis.

Getting that message across will be an uphill battle, she said.

"We can do much more through the media to counter some of the myths and misperceptions," Mrs. Clinton said. The Obama administration, she said, should use the Internet and cellphones to supplement traditional media and get its message to the Pakistani people.

On the plane, Mrs. Clinton recalled a visit to Pakistan as first lady, when she traveled with her daughter, Chelsea. "People remember when we try to connect," she said.

JERUSALEM - An Israeli official says U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to arrive in Israel at the weekend to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a fresh attempt to revive stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

An aide to Netanyahu said she was due on Saturday night. He spoke on condition of anonymity pending an official announcement.

Palestinian officials have said in local media interviews over the past few days that Clinton was expected to visit Palestinian leaders in the West Bank next week.

In Washington, the State Department had no comment on Clinton's travel plans, other than to say she would be in Morocco early next week where she would be meeting with various Arab foreign ministers.

Just a few hours earlier, at least 100 people were killed and 200 were injured when a powerful car bomb tore through a crowded market in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Hospital officials said two-thirds of the dead were women and children.

News of the attack reached the capital just after 2 p.m., as Clinton was discussing a $125 million energy aid package with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi. At a news conference immediately afterward, Clinton said: "I want you to know this fight is not Pakistan's alone. . . . These extremists are committed to destroying what is dear to us as much as they are committed to destroying that which is dear to you and to all people. So this is our struggle as well."

The energy assistance program is aimed at rebuilding Pakistan's electricity-production capacity, beginning with repairs and upgrades to local power stations. Clinton's three-day visit is geared toward public appearances, with the goal of quelling rising anti-Americanism among the public and assuring the Pakistani political opposition and military that the Obama administration seeks a full partnership with the country.

Zardari's administration has been placed on the defensive in recent weeks by accusations from domestic critics that his government is an American puppet. The criticism has been fueled by conditions that Congress placed on a multibillion-dollar aid package, which anti-Zardari forces in Pakistan say are designed to undermine the nation's sovereignty.

In between official meetings and the dinner Wednesday, Clinton held a combative interview with leading Pakistani reporters. She insisted that the Obama administration sees the U.S.-Pakistan relationship as one of equals, and she batted aside questions about alleged secret U.S. military and security contractor operations, which the U.S. Embassy here has repeatedly denied.

In a live television broadcast, she pushed the button on a computer that randomly chose more than 700 lottery winners. The lottery, part of a welfare program aimed at poor women and named after assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto -- Zardari's wife -- is slated to receive $85 million this year as part of the $7.5 billion U.S. aid package.

The Peshawar explosion was the latest in a wave of suicide bombings, assassinations and attacks staged in response to a major Pakistani military offensive against insurgent sanctuaries in the tribal area of South Waziristan, near the Afghanistan border.

Having broadcast images of Clinton's arrival earlier in the day, Pakistani news coverage quickly shifted to pictures of the carnage, highlighting the difficulty of her mission.

The blast occurred in the Mina Bazaar, a busy market in Peshawar's larger Qissa Khawani Bazaar. Relief workers and government officials said the explosion badly damaged six four-story buildings surrounding the bazaar, a historic site full of dark stalls and dusty treasures. One of the buildings collapsed, as did a nearby mosque, officials said.

There was no immediate assertion of responsibility for the bombing. But the provincial government spokesman, Iftikhar Hussain, told reporters that it was probably in reaction to the ongoing South Waziristan operation.

"The blast was so massive that it rocked the whole area," said Karim Khan, 40, a trader in the market. "When I came out of the shop, the bazaar was covered in dust and smoke. I rushed to the site and saw many people crying and screaming. Many shops in the market were engulfed by fire."

Shafqat Malik, a senior Pakistani police official, said more than 250 pounds of explosives had been planted in a parked car outside the market.

ISLAMABAD -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Pakistan on Wednesday for a three-day visit aimed at quelling rising anti-Americanism and convincing Pakistanis that the United States wants a relationship based on more than counterterrorism.

Her first trip here since becoming secretary comes amid a major Pakistani military offensive against insurgent sanctuaries near the Afghanistan border, and a wave of suicide bombings, assassinations and attacks in Pakistani cities. Details of the visit, which was not publicly announced in advance, have been closely held because of security concerns.

Although the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan "remains our highest priority," Clinton told reporters aboard the flight to Islamabad, the United States will move beyond a "lopsided" U.S.-Pakistan relationship weighted toward the "security and the counterterrorism agenda."

Clinton touted a $7.5 billion, five-year economic aid package authorized by Congress this month and said she would announce a major investment in Pakistan's domestic energy output while here.

President Obama's ongoing strategy deliberations on the war in Afghanistan are focused on maintaining democratic stability in Pakistan and promoting a robust Pakistani military response against insurgents fighting in both countries from sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the border.

While opinion polls indicate that only a minority of Pakistanis support the insurgency here, even fewer approve of the United States and its war policy, which includes regular drone-launched missile attacks on insurgents in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

U.S. actions and intentions have become a political football here, placing Pakistan's elected government on the defensive against political opposition and military charges that President Asif Ali Zardari is conspiring with the Americans to undermine Pakistani sovereignty. In recent weeks, the Pakistani media have highlighted congressional conditions placed on U.S. economic and military assistance, which many here see as intrusive.

Although Clinton will meet with Zardari and other government leaders, the heart of her trip is public relations. She has scheduled talks with political, civil society and tribal leaders and students; town hall meetings; and numerous media appearances in Islamabad and Lahore.

In two Pakistani television interviews recorded Monday but embargoed until her arrival, Clinton repeatedly noted that she has Pakistani friends, that she likes to wear a salwar kameez -- the long, loose shirt and trousers that are the Pakistani national dress -- and that her entire family loves Pakistani food.

She bemoaned the level of "mutual mistrust" and said that she and Obama "deeply regret that there is misunderstanding and that there may not be the kind of relationship we would like to see." Recalling her visits here as first lady, when she and her daughter, Chelsea, toured religious sites and met with women's groups, Clinton said that "people remember when we try to do that." The "official-to-official, government-to-government" mode, she said, "is not sufficient."

The administration must balance its desire to calm U.S.-Pakistan relations with congressional suspicion that U.S. military and economic aid will be wasted or diverted, either toward arming Pakistan for a potential fight against India or toward the insurgents themselves.

The new aid package requires specific areas of certification, including whether Pakistan is adequately fighting insurgents, maintaining democratic standards, protecting its nuclear arsenal and hewing to international nonproliferation standards.

Clinton said she was confident that the arsenal is safe under Pakistani military protection. But one of the conditions requires the U.S. administration to report on its efforts to gain access to A.Q. Khan, the former head of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, who Western intelligence has concluded sold weapons plans and components to states such as Iran and North Korea.

Pakistan has consistently refused to allow U.S. officials to interview Khan, and the government here recently lifted house arrest restrictions against him.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration on Monday came out strongly against efforts by Islamic nations to bar the defamation of religions, saying the moves would restrict free speech.

"Some claim that the best way to protect the freedom of religion is to implement so-called anti-defamation policies that would restrict freedom of expression and the freedom of religion," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters. "I strongly disagree."

Clinton said the United States was opposed to negative depictions of specific faiths and would always fight against belief-based discrimination. But she said a person's ability to practice their religion was entirely unrelated to another person's right to free speech.

"The protection of speech about religion is particularly important since persons of different faith will inevitably hold divergent views on religious questions," Clinton said. "These differences should be met with tolerance, not with the suppression of discourse."

Her comments came as the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a 56-nation bloc of Islamic countries, is pressing the U.N. Human Rights Council to adopt a resolution that would broadly condemn the defamation of religion.

The effort is widely seen as a reaction to perceived anti-Islamic incidents, including the publication in Europe of several cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Michael Posner, the assistant U.S. secretary of state for human rights, democracy and labor whose office prepares the religious freedom report, said the resolution "goes too far."

"The notion that a religion can be defamed and that any comments that are negative about that religion can constitute a violation of human rights to us violates the core principle of free speech," he said.

Posner was part of a delegation at the Human Rights Council that successfully negotiated with Egypt a compromise over another similar resolution that had aimed to condemn religion-related harassment or discrimination.

He said the administration wanted to differentiate between such harassment and defamation and would do so both in the Human Rights Council and the U.N. General Assembly.

"There are limits to free expression and there are certainly concerns about people targeting individuals because of their religious belief or their race or their ethnicity," he said.

"But at the same time, we're also clear that a resolution, broadly speaking, that talks about the defamation of a religion is a violation of free speech."

Clinton and Posner spoke as they released the State Department's annual report on international religious freedom, which, as in years past, criticized Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea and Sudan for violating religious freedom.

Those eight nations are designated "countries of particular concern" for abuses of religious worshippers. The Obama administration is currently reviewing the designations, which can be accompanied by sanctions.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized on Monday an attempt by Islamic countries to prohibit defamation of religions, saying such policies would restrict free speech.

"Some claim that the best way to protect the freedom of religion is to implement so-called anti-defamation policies. . . . I strongly disagree," Clinton said. "The protection of speech about religion is particularly important since persons of different faiths will inevitably hold divergent views on religious questions."

While unnamed in Clinton's speech, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a group of 56 Islamic nations, has been pushing hard for the U.N. Human Rights Council to adopt resolutions that broadly bar the defamation of religion. The effort has raised concerns that such resolutions could be used to justify crackdowns on free speech in Muslim countries.

Clinton made her comments while unveiling the State Department's annual report on international religious freedom.

"To date, President Obama has raised religious freedom in his speeches abroad without those sentiments being translated into concrete policy actions, and our hope is that this report will be the administration's call to action," said Leonard Leo, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent federal agency.

The 1998 legislation that established the annual report on religious freedom created Leo's group -- a permanent, nine-member commission to advise the president and government -- as well as an ambassador at large for international religious freedom.

Knox Thames, acting executive director of the group, singled out the report's description of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Vietnam. "I think it could be stronger. In their Vietnam chapter, for instance, it completely ignores the issue of prisoners. It's believed several individuals are in jail because of their religiously motivated politics," he said. "We just think that's a mistake."

Tom Farr, who was the first director of the State Department's office of international religious freedom and now teaches at Georgetown University, called the report imbalanced. "It spends too much time identifying the problem and not enough on what the U.S. is doing and should be doing to address the problem," he said.

Farr also noted that the report was presented without an ambassador at large in charge of international religious freedom, because Obama has not nominated a candidate.

"I think it's a bad sign," he said. "There's no excuse for not having anyone in that spot by now."

Monday's report also was notable for highlighting interfaith efforts, something Obama has pushed in his international speeches. Clinton, in her remarks, made deliberate mention of two such efforts, including contributions by Jordan to an interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

The new effort began on Friday, officials said, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made calls to both Mr. Zelaya and the head of the de facto government, Roberto Micheletti.

In those calls, officials said, Mrs. Clinton told the two leaders that there was "increasing frustration" in the United States and Latin America over the deteriorating situation in Honduras, the hemisphere's third-poorest country. She reserved her toughest comments for Mr. Micheletti, officials said, because the United States believes he has been "the most difficult."

"During the call, he spent a lot of time talking about the past," a State Department official said. "She wanted to talk about the future."

Among other things, Mr. Micheletti has refused to accept any political deal that would allow Mr. Zelaya to return to power. He has demanded that the international community declare Mr. Zelaya's ouster a legal transition of power. And, with the help of lobbyists in Washington, he has tried to pressure the United States to agree to recognize the outcome of presidential elections scheduled for next month.

Most Latin American countries have said that they would not recognize the elections unless Mr. Zelaya, who is holed up in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, is first restored to power. The United States has threatened to do the same.

A senior administration official said Mrs. Clinton spoke to Mr. Micheletti on Friday for more than half an hour.

"The purpose was to remind him there were two pathways to the elections," the official said, "one where Honduras goes by itself and the other where it goes with broad support from the international community."

The coup in Honduras has threatened to become a sore point between the Obama administration and the rest of Latin America, where an increasing number of leaders have accused the United States of failing to put sufficient pressure on the de facto government to force it to compromise and stop its repression of journalists, human rights activists and pro-Zelaya demonstrators.

The issue has also created political headaches for President Obama in Congress, where a few Republicans have held up key State Department appointments as a way of pressuring the administration to reverse its condemnation of the coup. The Republican group, led by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, has said Mr. Zelaya's opponents had no choice but to oust him because he had tried to illegally extend his time in power.

Meanwhile, Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has called on the administration to stand firm in condemning the coup. Frederick Jones, a spokesman for Mr. Kerry, said Monday, "It should be perfectly clear to Mr. Micheletti that the coup, and his martial provisions to shut down media outlets, harass and arrest politicians, and influence the elections are unacceptable, and will not succeed."

On Friday, Mr. Holbrooke turned up at the State Department podium to deliver a briefing on Pakistan that seemed intended mainly to show that he had not been sidelined, after his absence from efforts last week to persuade President Hamid Karzai to accept the need for a runoff election in Afghanistan.

Mr. Holbrooke clashed with Mr. Karzai in August, after the first round of voting, over the president's refusal even to consider a runoff, according to several officials. So when it was time to talk Mr. Karzai into acquiescing, Mrs. Clinton turned to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who was planning a trip to the region.

During many hours of meetings with Mr. Karzai, Mr. Kerry got an earful about the president's problems with Mr. Holbrooke, according to people who were briefed on the discussions. Mr. Holbrooke does not deny there was tension over the runoff but said his relations with Mr. Karzai were otherwise cordial. In the next week, he said, he plans to resume his bimonthly trips to Kabul.

"In terms of my relationships with President Karzai, they're fine, they're correct, they're appropriate," he said Friday. "I have absolutely no problems with him, and it's as simple as that."

Mr. Mitchell, meanwhile, has been laboring fruitlessly to bring the Israelis and Palestinians together. Last week, Mrs. Clinton reported to Mr. Obama that the United States faced "challenges" in the region, a charitable way of saying that only minor progress had been made since the president issued an urgent call last month to jump-start peace negotiations.

If anything, the climate for talks has gotten even worse with the recent publication of a report alleging war crimes by both sides during Israel's military strike on Gaza last winter. Israel says acceptance of the report would make negotiations impossible, while the Palestinian Authority has been weakened by its wavering reaction to the report.

Neither Mr. Mitchell nor Mr. Holbrooke is in any danger of losing his job; administration officials said both enjoy the confidence of their bosses. Indeed, they were hired precisely to take the arrows for Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, so these leaders do not expend their diplomatic capital too soon.

Still, the last few weeks have tested the fortitude of both men. Even a proven record in peacemaking - Mr. Mitchell helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in North Ireland; Mr. Holbrooke, the Dayton Accords for Bosnia - is no guarantee of success this time around.

Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former Middle East peace negotiator, said that while he had confidence in both men, they needed to seize greater control over the administration’s policy-making process.

"The problem is not merchandising or marketing, it's the product," said Mr. Kurtzer, who has advised Mr. Obama on Middle East issues. "If you don't have a good policy, it doesn't matter if you have a good envoy or not."

Mr. Kurtzer played down Mr. Holbrooke's relations with Mr. Karzai. "When you have good envoys, they ruffle feathers," he said. But he added that the administration needed to settle on a policy for Afghanistan so that Mr. Holbrooke could deliver a coherent message to Mr. Karzai.

Some administration officials said there was a "good cop, bad cop" dimension to the administration's Afghan strategy, with Mr. Holbrooke applying the prod to Mr. Karzai while the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl W. Eikenberry, cajoles the Afghan leader.

Mrs. Clinton has taken a similar "good cop" approach to Mr. Karzai. In a 40-minute call to him a week ago, she encouraged him up by recounting her own electoral setbacks and assuring him that he would emerge stronger from a runoff, according to a high-ranking official.

Mr. Mitchell, who has a much lower-voltage personality than Mr. Holbrooke, has avoided public spats with Israeli or Palestinian officials. A few Israeli commentators have called for his resignation, citing the lack of progress in the talks. But he remains on good terms with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.

Speaking to reporters last week in Maine, his home state, Mr. Mitchell sounded undaunted. "It is as difficult and complex and complicated as everyone told me," he said. "But we are determined to hold the course."

For the administration, though, the big question is how long it will stay with its current plan, which is to demand a freeze in settlement construction from Israel and a series of confidence-building measures from Israel's neighbors, or try something completely different.

"There is increasing thinking about Plan B," said a senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter.

The appointments of Mr. Holbrooke and Mr. Mitchell relieved Mrs. Clinton of the diplomatic heavy lifting, particularly in the Middle East, where her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, spent many fruitless days and nights. But that may be about to change.

Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to make her first trip to Pakistan soon, and will stop in Morocco on the way home for a conference, where she will lobby Arab foreign ministers to take conciliatory steps toward Israel. There is no word on whether she will make a stop in Afghanistan, but it may be unlikely given the runoff.

In his briefing on Friday, Mr. Holbrooke said that when she traveled to Pakistan, Mrs. Clinton would try to see "as many people as she can in a limited period of time, within the limits of a very, very dramatic situation."

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration's coordinator of policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan offered an upbeat outlook Friday for avoiding extensive cheating in the Nov. 7 Afghan presidential runoff election.

In his remarks at the State Department, Richard Holbrooke also sought to dispel suggestions that his relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai are so bad that he is unable to work with the Afghan leader.

"In terms of my relationships with President Karzai, they're fine. They're correct. They're appropriate," he said. "I speak to him on behalf of my government, and he speaks as president of the country. I respect him. And if he is re-elected as president on Nov. 7, we all look forward to working closely with him in pursuit of mutual goals."

He said he will see Karzai in a few days, "and I have absolutely no problems with him. And it's as simple as that."

Holbrooke said he is hopeful that the Nov. 7 election will not see a repeat of the widespread fraud that caused a U.N.-backed election investigation to throw out nearly one-third of the votes cast for Karzai in the Aug. 20 balloting. That pushed Karzai below the 50 percent mark he needed to avoid a runoff.

"It is reasonable to hope that there will be less irregularities this time for several reasons," Holbrooke said.

He cited the fact that there will be two candidates this time, rather than the dozens who ran in August. Secondly, he said the experience of detecting fraud the first time around should help avoid it next time.

"Three, the international community, including the forces under Gen. (Stanley) McChrystal's command, are going to go all-out to help make this a success," he said, referring to American and NATO-led troops that will be available for security duties in greater number than in August.

The Obama administration is counting on the Nov. 7 vote being held in a way that Afghans and the international community see as legitimate. An outcome short of that is likely to raise further doubts about the wisdom of investing more U.S. troops and other resources in a counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan. A key pillar of that campaign is an Afghan government that is a credible partner of the U.S. and NATO.

Holbrooke also announced that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to visit Pakistan to meet with government officials, leaders of the political opposition, civic leaders and business interests.

He declined to provide specifics, saying details are being kept under wraps to protect Clinton's security in a country that has been rocked by terrorist attacks in recent weeks. He lamented what he called speculation in Pakistan about the precise timing of her visit and the locations she intends to visit.

"I can tell you honestly that if the speculation is too well-informed it will affect the content of the trip," Holbrooke said.

It will be Clinton's first trip to Pakistan as secretary of state. She has not visited Afghanistan since taking office.

Among the topics expected to be discussed on Clinton's visit is the Pakistani military's large-scale offensive in South Waziristan, heartland of the Pakistani Taliban militants seeking to destabilize the government.

Holbrooke, who will accompany Clinton on the visit, said "we'll look closely" while in Pakistan at how that campaign near the Afghan border is going. He said his intelligence advisers told him Friday they have no "definitive information" on progress thus far by the Pakistani army, which began the offensive on Oct. 17.

"They're in the early phase," Holbrooke said. "But it'll take a while before we know whether the enemy they're fighting has been dispersed or destroyed or some mix of the two. But this is, obviously, a question of very great importance, and we'll look at it closely during the trip."

Separately, Frederick Kagan, a military historian at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, told reporters Friday that the Pakistani offensive is more sophisticated and better planned than previous - largely unsuccessful - attempts by the government to take on the Pakistani Taliban movement.

Kagan said the operation could turn out to be an important turning point in the long struggle against Islamic extremists. One reason to be encouraged, he said, is that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has shown a greater willingness than his predecessors since 2001 to act boldly against the Taliban.

"It really is the first time that you've had a Pakistani president see a potential big political gain for him in fighting the Taliban, fighting to liberate Pakistani territory from the Taliban," Kagan said, adding that it's reasonable to hope that this effort could be turning the tide of Pakistani public opinion against the Taliban in a way not unlike the popular uprising of Sunni Arabs in western Iraq against al-Qaida fighters in 2007.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton briefed President Obama on Thursday on the status of the administration's push for new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The message: still a work in progress.

Obama had announced Sept. 22 that he would seek a report from Clinton in mid-October after he had brought together the Palestinian and Israeli leaders for a rare three-way meeting. At the time he signaled impatience with the months of stalemate about when and how to relaunch the talks, declaring: "It is past time to talk about starting negotiations. It is time to move forward."

Since then, the president's Middle East envoy, former senator George J. Mitchell, has shuttled repeatedly between the parties seeking agreement on parameters for the talks. But a senior Obama administration official, in an e-mailed statement to reporters after Clinton's briefing, made it clear that there is not yet a deal.

"The Secretary advised the president that challenges remain as the United States continues to work with both sides to relaunch negotiations in an atmosphere in which they can succeed," the official said.

To that end, Mitchell will soon return to the region and Clinton will consult with Arab foreign ministers in Morrocco in early November, the official said.

In many ways, the gap between the two sides appears to have grown since Obama met with the leaders. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has toughened his public stance after he faced criticism at home for initially delaying a debate on a report by the U.N. Human Rights Council accusing Israel of war crimes during last winter's war in the Gaza Strip. The report also accused the militant group Hamas of similar crimes. But U.S. officials privately say that there continues to be slow, if steady, progress and that the administration remains intent on restarting talks by the end of the year.

In between private meetings with former colleagues, Clinton joined Senate Democrats for a lunch meeting and an exchange of views on a variety of global hot spots. Clinton did not give any prepared statement, choosing instead simply to answer questions from lawmakers concerned about Afghanistan, Iraq and other pressing diplomatic issues.

Senators present said the largest share of the discussion was devoted to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Obama administration is in the midst of a strategic review of the conflict, and both White House advisers and Senate Democrats are divided over whether to send thousands more U.S. troops to the region. On Thursday, Clinton did not tip the administration's hand.

"I think she just gave a very honest and very effective summary of the questions" faced by Obama, said Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.). "She didn't say where the president is or where they're going."

Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said the discussion was wide-ranging.

"We just asked a whole lot of questions about different subjects," he said. "There was a lot on Afghanistan but a lot of other subjects too.... Also Iran, Middle East a number of other questions."

Before Obama nominated Clinton as secretary of state in the wake of her unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign, Clinton spent eight years in the senate, working her way into a position of prominence on the Armed Services Committee. Along the way, Clinton earned a reputation as a serious legislator and the affection of many of her colleagues, some of whom had been initially skeptical of the former first lady's intentions.

On Thursday, Clinton's former colleagues were happy to welcome her back, giving her sustained applause at the end of the luncheon discussion before she slipped out a back door to head to her next meeting.

"She fielded many questions about different parts of the world," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). "She actually didn't even give a talk, she just answered questions. She was just amazingly thorough and well-informed and I think people were incredibly impressed."

Clinton held a private session with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) before the lunch, discussing State Department management issues as well as foreign policy topics. Clinton was also set to meet with Levin Thursday afternoon, and will attend a dinner Thursday evening with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and a group of lawmakers who recently returned from an official trip to Sudan.

With a congressional battle looming, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday defended the administration's broad arms-control agenda and said that reducing U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles would be a critical first step in preventing the spread of the deadly weapons to other countries.

Clinton took aim at President Obama's critics in what was billed as a major address on nuclear nonproliferation at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Speaking to a room packed with experts on nuclear issues, she urged support for a new U.S.-Russian arms-control treaty and a global pact banning nuclear testing.

"Clinging to nuclear weapons in excess of our security needs does not make the United States safer," Clinton said. "And the nuclear status quo is neither desirable nor sustainable. It gives other countries the motivation -- or the excuse -- to pursue their own nuclear options."

Obama has won international recognition, including a Nobel Peace Prize, for his plans to strengthen the world's fragile nuclear nonproliferation system and move toward an eventual "world without nuclear weapons." But in coming months, his strategy will be put to the test in the Senate. Failure to win ratification of the U.S.-Russian pact and the test-ban treaty would weaken Obama's ability to persuade other countries to crack down on the spread of nuclear weapons.

Clinton emphasized the "alarming" range of nuclear proliferation risks in the world today, including North Korea's weapons program and Iran's secretive efforts to enrich uranium. The Islamic republic says it is developing civilian nuclear energy, but other countries fear it could produce a bomb.

In an apparent swipe at George W. Bush's administration, Clinton said that it was easy to advocate a "go-it-alone" attitude toward nuclear weapons. "But we have seen the failed results of this approach," she added.

She acknowledged that negotiating a new deal to reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles would not solve the Iranian or North Korean nuclear problems. But, she said, the pact would demonstrate to skeptics worldwide that the U.S. government was sticking to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the grand global bargain of 1968 in which the nuclear powers promised to gradually disarm and other countries pledged to forgo such weapons.

"It will help convince the rest of the international community to strengthen nonproliferation controls and tighten the screws on states that flout their nonproliferation commitments," Clinton said.

The U.S. and Russian governments are racing to complete the pact, which would replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). That 1991 treaty halved the superpowers' nuclear stockpiles and contains the only mechanisms allowing each side to verify the other's nuclear weapons. It will expire Dec. 5.

Already, some U.S. senators have expressed concern about whether the new pact contains too many concessions. Ratification "is not going to be an easy proposition," Sen. John Kyl (Ariz.), a member of the Senate Republican leadership, said last week.

An even bigger challenge for the administration will be getting Senate approval of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which did not win ratification in 1999.

Clinton said the pact would give the United States more power to challenge states engaged in suspicious testing activities. Other countries, she said, "rightly or wrongly view American ratification . . . as a sign of our commitment to the nonproliferation consensus."

Critics have questioned whether it is possible to verify that countries are observing the treaty and have expressed concerns about whether it would prevent modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

In what aides called an important passage in her speech, Clinton said that a major, Pentagon-led review of U.S. nuclear strategy will be a "key milestone."

The review, which the State Department is helping to formulate, is expected to be complete by January.

"We must do more than reduce the numbers of our nuclear weapons. We must also reduce the role they play in our security," Clinton said, adding: "We can't afford to continue relying on recycled Cold War thinking."

Mrs. Clinton hinted at broad changes in thinking since the last review in 2001. "Now is the time for fresh views on the role of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal," she said. "We can't afford to continue relying on recycled cold-war thinking."

Her comments seemed calculated to shield President Obama from criticism by some in Congress who contend that his call for deep reductions in nuclear stockpiles could jeopardize the country's defenses.

"We must do more than reduce the numbers of our nuclear weapons," she said. "We must also reduce the role they play in our security."

In her speech on the administration's nonproliferation efforts, an address the State Department had billed as particularly important, Mrs. Clinton sought to impart a sense of urgency.

"Unless we act decisively and act now, the situation may deteriorate catastrophically and irreversibly," she said in the speech, delivered to the United States Institute of Peace, a government-financed research center, on the occasion of its 25th anniversary.

Her remarks on Iran were particularly timely. Earlier in the day, during talks in Vienna, Tehran tentatively agreed to ship much of its stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia.

She welcomed the offer as "a constructive beginning" but cautioned that the United States would not put up with any Iranian tactics that seemed intended to buy time.

Similarly, while welcoming North Korea's return to six-nation talks about dismantling the country's nuclear program, Mrs. Clinton said that any improvement of relations would depend on credible actions by the North Koreans. No normalization of ties was possible with a nuclear North Korea, she said.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a warning Wednesday about the spread of materials and know-how for making nuclear weapons, citing a failure to stop North Korea from developing the bomb and weakness in the U.N. agency responsible for monitoring nuclear programs.

"Unless these trends are reversed - and reversed soon - we will find ourselves in a world with a steadily growing number of nuclear-armed states and an increasing likelihood of terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons," Clinton said in a speech laying out the Obama administration's nuclear arms concerns.

Atop her list of key challenges in the spread of nuclear weapons technology, Clinton listed North Korea, which has an active nuclear weapons program in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

"The international community failed to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons," she said.

While reiterating the administration's willingness to hold one-on-one talks with North Korea, Clinton said it would be insufficient for that country to simply return to negotiations over its nuclear program.

"Current sanctions will not be relaxed until Pyongyang takes verifiable, irreversible steps toward complete denuclearization," she told members of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a think tank. "Its leaders should be under no illusion that the United States will ever have normal, sanctions-free relations with a nuclear-armed North Korea."

Clinton also faulted Iran, which asserts that it has no intention of building nuclear weapons, for ignoring calls by the U.N. Security Council to suspend its enrichment of uranium. Iran says it is enriching uranium to make fuel required to run a network of electricity-generating nuclear reactors.

She called for prompt action by Iran to execute an emerging plan to use its own low-enriched uranium to refuel a research reactor in Tehran - an arrangement that would greatly reduce the amount of enriched uranium available to Iran for potential further processing and illicit use in making a nuclear weapon.

Clinton did not mention talks Wednesday in Vienna meant to work out such an arrangement. Iranian negotiators expressed support for the deal, so long as it is accepted by their leaders. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said that negotiators from Iran, the U.S., Russia and France had accepted a draft deal and that he hoped for final approval from all four countries by Friday.

Clinton also lamented the failure of the IAEA under ElBaradei to detect a recently revealed uranium-enrichment facility that Iran had kept secret for some years.

"The IAEA should make full use of existing verification authorities, including special inspections," she said. "But it should also be given new authorities, including the ability to investigate suspected nuclear weapons-related activities even when no nuclear materials are present. And if we expect the IAEA to be a bulwark of the nonproliferation regime, we must also give it the resources necessary to do its job."