KABUL, Afghanistan - It is far from clear that President Obama can depend on President Hamid Karzai to bring order to this violent country, but it is becoming clear that he will depend on Hillary Rodham Clinton to be his go-between in dealing with the mercurial Afghan leader.

In a visit to Kabul, during which she held a 90-minute, one-on-one session with Mr. Karzai on Wednesday, and in an intense telephone call a few weeks ago in the aftermath of Afghanistan's election, Secretary of State Clinton has built an unlikely rapport with the Afghan leader, according to administration officials.

It is a new and risky role for Mrs. Clinton - one that thrusts her into the thick of the administration's most critical international problem, but that also hitches her reputation to a leader who has often proved unreliable. If Mr. Karzai lets down the White House again, Mrs. Clinton, as his principal intermediary with the administration, could find herself damaged along with him.

Mrs. Clinton, who got to know Mr. Karzai in 2005 when she took him to Fort Drum in upstate New York to thank American veterans of the Afghan war, seems to recognize the potential dangers.

"When I came into the administration, I was one of the few people who had a long-term positive relationship with President Karzai," Mrs. Clinton said in an interview on Thursday, hours after seeing him get sworn in. "I continue to believe he has a tremendous historical opportunity."

But she quickly added, "That doesn't mean you make excuses for behavior that you want to see changed; you constantly push back." In the meeting this week, a senior official said, she bluntly warned Mr. Karzai to crack down on corruption or risk losing American aid.

Her rapport with Mr. Karzai puts her in a distinct minority among senior American officials, some of whom have either clashed with him or, as in the case of Mr. Obama, never developed a relationship with him.

With Mr. Obama planning to announce his decision soon on sending more troops to Afghanistan, Mrs. Clinton has emerged, for better or worse, as the senior official best placed to push Mr. Karzai to help make that policy work. Mr. Karzai appears to appreciate the relationship; he moved up the date of his inauguration to accommodate her schedule, a senior American official said.

As Mr. Karzai begins his new term, Mrs. Clinton has worked to avoid a hectoring tone in her public comments about him. American officials had done too much of that in the past, she said.

Shortly before Mr. Obama took office, Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. stalked out of a meeting with Mr. Karzai. More recently, Mr. Karzai reacted badly when the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, asked him what he would do if a runoff election became necessary after the initial round of voting in August.

The American ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, has a workable relationship with Mr. Karzai, officials said. But the two have also had their ups and downs, and anyway, some American officials say the White House needs an interlocutor at a higher level than an ambassador, or even a special envoy, like Mr. Holbrooke.

President George W. Bush used to conduct regular video conference calls with Mr. Karzai from the White House. When Mr. Obama stopped the practice, officials said, it left Mr. Karzai hurt and bewildered.

"It is critical Obama develops a channel to Karzai where hard messages can go both ways," said Bruce O. Riedel, who helped the administration formulate its initial Afghan policy. "It is time-consuming, but we can't hope to succeed without a political channel that works."

Mrs. Clinton "combines the hard-headed strength, the political clout and the human understanding to do it right," said Mr. Riedel, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Of those qualities, her political bona fides may be the most relevant. When Mr. Karzai was wavering about whether to allow a runoff vote after almost a million of his votes were disqualified, she implored him to acquiesce, arguing that he would emerge with a stronger hand. (In the end, Mr. Karzai's rival, Abdullah Abdullah, pulled out, making a second round unnecessary.)

In case Mr. Karzai did not get her point, Mrs. Clinton reminded him of her own bitter experience in the 2008 Democratic primaries, losing to Mr. Obama, who later named her the nation's chief diplomat.

"One of the ways that I talk with President Karzai is in very political terms, because I understand that in politics, you've got to make some tough compromises sometimes," she said.

American officials failed to make allowances for his circumstances in trying to govern an unruly country, she said. "We were trying to hold him to a standard that was not in sync with the historical standard."

When Mr. Karzai first took office in 2002, she noted, there were one million students in Afghanistan, virtually all boys. Today, there are seven million, 40 percent of them girls. She said Mr. Karzai deserved some credit for that, as well as for other advances during his tenure.

Mrs. Clinton also noted that the United States was hardly a perfect candidate to demand a crackdown on corruption.

Asked about reports in The New York Times that the C.I.A. made payments to a brother on Mr. Karzai. Ahmed Wali karzai, who is suspected of involvement in the drug trade, Mrs. Clinton did not respond directly, but said, "Every country makes compromises, and it behooves you to be humble about pointing fingers."

"It also is a reminder that we have to do more to support his campaign against corruption," she added. "We have to facilitate, not impede, the removal and even prosecution of those who are corrupt."

With Hamid Karzai around for the foreseeable future, the administration has little choice but to accommodate him. So Mrs. Clinton looked for praiseworthy lines in Mr. Karzai's inaugural speech. If he delivers, she said, he can expect American support for years to come.

"I would imagine, if things go well, that we would be helping with the education and health systems and agriculture productivity long after the military presence had either diminished or disappeared," she said.

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

WASHINGTON - It's the hottest ticket in town. Just don't ask the White House who got them.

The White House is saying very little about next week's state dinner with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, the first for President Obama. Folks aren't talking about the menu, the guest list, or even where it's being held. But the official silence is only fueling the speculation about who's in and who's out.

New warmth from U.S. is acknowledgment that Afghan leader is needed as partner

When a team of senior U.S. officials led by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton entered the presidential palace in Kabul on Wednesday for a dinner meeting, they had little indication of what Afghan President Hamid Karzai planned to discuss, or whether questions about corruption and governance would pitch their host into a foul mood.

But instead of revisiting old disputes, Karzai brought in several cabinet ministers to talk about development and security. He explained details of a new effort to address graft. And halfway through a meal of lamb stew, chicken and rice, he looked across the table and said he had decided that the United States would be a "critical partner" in his second term, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with the meeting.

The Americans also turned on the charm. Clinton, wearing an embroidered floral coat she had purchased on an earlier trip to Afghanistan, told stories of her time in Arkansas and in the Senate, and listened with interest as the Afghans detailed how they recently exported 12 tons of apples to India by air.

As President Obama nears a decision on how many more troops he will dispatch to Afghanistan, his top diplomats and generals are abandoning for now their get-tough tactics with Karzai and attempting to forge a far warmer relationship. They recognize that their initial strategy may have done more harm than good, fueling stress and anger in a beleaguered, conspiracy-minded leader whom the U.S. government needs as a partner.

"It's not sustainable to have a 'War of the Roses' relationship here, where . . . we basically throw things at each other," said another senior administration official, one of more than a dozen U.S. and Afghan government officials interviewed for this article. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal policy deliberations.

The new approach, which one official described as a "reset" of the relationship, will entail more engagement with members of Karzai's cabinet and provincial governors, officials said, because they have concluded that the Afghan president lacks the political clout in his highly decentralized nation to purge corrupt local warlords and power brokers. The CIA has sent a longtime field officer close to Karzai to be the new station chief in Kabul. And State Department envoy Richard C. Holbrooke, whose aggressive style has infuriated the Afghan leader at times, is devoting more attention to shaping policy in Washington and marshaling international support for reconstruction and development programs.

The tension in the relationship stems from the cumulative impact of several White House decisions that were intended to improve the quality of the Afghan government. When Obama became president, he discontinued his predecessor's practice of holding bimonthly videoconferences with Karzai. Obama granted wide latitude to the hard-charging Holbrooke to pressure Karzai to tackle the corruption and mismanagement that have fueled the Taliban's rise. The administration also indicated that it wanted many candidates to challenge Karzai in the August presidential election.

Although there is broad agreement among Obama's national security team that Karzai has been an ineffective leader, a growing number of top officials have begun to question in recent months whether those actions wound up goading him into doing exactly what the White House did not want: forging alliances with former warlords, letting drug traffickers out of prison and threatening to sack competent ministers. Those U.S. officials now think that Karzai, a tactically shrewd tribal chieftain who is under enormous stress as he seeks to placate and balance rival factions in his government, may operate best when he does not feel besieged.

Criticism of the Obama administration's manner of dealing with Karzai has been most pronounced among senior military officials, who question why the State Department has not dispatched more civilians to help the Afghan leader fix the government or worked more intensively with him to achieve U.S. goals.

"We've been treating Karzai like [Slobodan] Milosevic," a senior Pentagon official said, referring to the former Bosnian Serb leader whom Holbrooke pressured into accepting a peace treaty in the 1990s. "That's not a model that will work in Afghanistan."

Fueling tensions

Karzai's first indication that his relationship with the United States would undergo a profound shift occurred 10 days before Obama's inauguration. Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. had come to the palace for dinner, and halfway through the meal, he began taking his host to task for how he was responding to civilian casualties caused by U.S. and NATO military operations.

Biden told Karzai that he was politicizing the issue and leveling "ill-founded" allegations in public, according to a previously undisclosed account of the dinner from a person who attended. Karzai argued back, and the discussion turned tense. "Biden got a little bit passionate about it," the participant said. "Karzai was taken aback, and he got a little bit passionate, too."

Clinton further stoked tensions during her confirmation hearing three days later by calling Afghanistan a "narco-state" with a government "plagued by limited capacity and widespread corruption." When Holbrooke was appointed Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan the following week, the diplomat made little secret of his desire to see others challenge Karzai in the election. In State Department meetings and Washington cocktail parties, he talked up Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank official who speaks eloquently about the need to address corruption but has only a small political base in Afghanistan.

At the time, others in the administration were equally harsh in their assessment of Karzai. One senior official remarked that he had "plateaued as a leader," and the classified version of a White House review of Afghanistan strategy implied, according to two officials who read it, a lack of support for Karzai's reelection. Holbrooke and others openly discussed plans to send U.S. development assistance directly to provincial governors and cabinet ministers.

Back then, top administration officials thought that increasing pressure on Karzai would lead him to take meaningful steps to reduce corruption and improve governance. The officials also hoped to encourage potential rivals to run against Karzai by sending a clear signal that he was no longer Washington's man.

Neither assumption played out as planned. Karzai recoiled at the demands, his advisers said, in part because he resented being told what to do but also because he thought that Obama administration officials overestimated his control of the country. There also have been conflicting U.S. messages: While Biden and others pressed Karzai to remove his brother as the chairman of the provincial council in Kandahar because of allegations that he is connected to drug trafficking, the CIA continued to pay him for sharing intelligence and assisting with counterterrorism operations, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of intelligence operations in Afghanistan.

The U.S. approach to the election had the unintended consequence of strengthening Karzai's hand. "Nobody wanted to coalesce around a single candidate because they each thought they were America's favorite," said Ali Jalali, a former interior minister who briefly considered running.

Karzai was able to pull key opposition figures to his side by promising them positions in the new government. Fear that he no longer had U.S. support also prompted him to name Mohammed Fahim, a prominent former warlord alleged to have been involved in drug smuggling and corruption, as one of his vice presidential candidates.

"We created a political-diplomatic isometric exercise," said Ronald Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. "The more we pressed him to remove people, the more he thought we were trying to undercut him, and we drove him back to the worst actors for support."

By the May 8 filing deadline, it was clear to many in Washington that Karzai would almost certainly win a second term. But there was no substantive effort to recalibrate the relationship. Although the administration maintained a neutral stance with regard to the election, Karzai saw it differently, according to his advisers.

"He was sure," one said, "that Washington wanted him to lose."

Disputed election

On Aug. 21, the day after Afghanistan's election, Holbrooke and U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry visited Karzai in a wood-paneled room in his Kabul palace to discuss the election and how Karzai would govern if he won.

Although only a small fraction of the ballots had been counted, and widespread reports of fraud were reaching the capital, Karzai told the Americans he believed he had prevailed.

"The votes haven't been counted yet," Holbrooke told Karzai, according to a U.S. official familiar with the exchange.

Karzai brushed him off. "I've won," he said.

Holbrooke moved on to other subjects, but he soon returned to the election. He asked Karzai how he would react if he did not receive a majority of votes. But one Afghan official asserted to journalists that Holbrooke pushed Karzai to agree to a second round before all of the ballots were counted. Although Holbrooke and Eikenberry stayed until dinner was finished, the meeting ended in acrimony.

Karzai later sought to call Obama to complain. But White House aides, who deemed the Afghan leader's ploy inappropriate, said he was unavailable. Karzai then tried to reach Clinton. He received the same response.

Karzai was left seething, one of his advisers said.

"Looking back on it now, I believe it was a genuine misunderstanding," Holbrooke said.

By mid-October, when it became clear that the number of votes disqualified because of suspected fraud would push him below 50 percent, the administration scrambled for a way to get Karzai to agree to a second round. Holbrooke could not go because the relationship was still too raw, and Clinton said she wanted him in Washington to participate in Afghanistan strategy meetings. The administration pressed into service Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who was traveling in the region.

It took more than 20 hours of talks over four days, but Kerry persuaded Karzai to accede to the runoff. To critics of the forceful approach, the senator showed that patient diplomacy -- drinking copious cups of tea, flattering his ego and going for long walks in the palace garden -- could still get Karzai to bend.

"You have to show him respect and consideration," said Zalmay Khalilzad, a Bush administration envoy to Afghanistan who remains close to Karzai. "You cannot lecture him. You have to listen to his explanations, why he thinks something cannot be done, and then respond to that in a constructive way."

New expectations

Administration officials involved in shaping the strategy insist that it was not possible to recalibrate their approach to Karzai until the election and the ensuing disputes over ballot-box stuffing had concluded. This period "was a tremendous drain on the relationship," said the senior official familiar with Wednesday's meeting.

In the meantime, U.S. officials also have adjusted their expectations of what Karzai can accomplish.

"This top-down thing where you go to the palace and say, 'You've got to fix this, got to fix that. Please, Mr. President.' He agrees to do things almost every time and they don't get done. Then we think it's because he's being obstructionist," the senior official said. But we cannot "expect him to solve things which he can't solve."

Administration officials are also hopeful that the CIA's new station chief in Kabul will be an influential voice in encouraging Karzai to address U.S. concerns. The chief, who was most recently based in a Middle Eastern nation, led a team that supported Karzai's effort to work with tribal elders to reclaim control of his native Uruzgan province from the Taliban in November 2001, according to two people with knowledge of intelligence operations in the country. The sources said that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, was in favor of sending the officer to Kabul. The CIA declined to comment.

Despite the changes, administration officials maintain that they are not going soft on Karzai. Clinton, they said, told the Afghan leader in a 90-minute private meeting after the dinner that future levels of development aid will be linked to improvements in governance, and she urged him to use merit, not cronyism, as a criteria for filling cabinet posts. She also indicated that the White House would seek to have the Afghan government meet as-yet-defined benchmarks of progress as a condition of U.S. security and development assistance.

"There's no diminution of concern," the senior official said. "But she did it within the context of a different tone."

In public comments after Karzai's inaugural speech, in which he pledged to address corruption by ordering government officials to disclose their assets and establishing a major-crimes tribunal, Clinton praised his specificity but noted that she wanted to see results. She said: "We're going to -- along with the people of Afghanistan -- watch very carefully as to how that's implemented."

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, The Washington Post, November 20, 2009

KABUL - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that the international community will support the embattled Afghan government, but expects it to build up the country's defense forces, boost security and improve the lives of its impoverished people.

Clinton met at the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy with foreign ministers from about a dozen nations who are in the capital to attend Thursday's inauguration of Hamid Karzai, who won a second presidential term following an election marred by fraud.

She met with Karzai for about 90 minutes Wednesday night at the presidential palace.

"I think that there's a very clear understanding, on the part of not only President Karzai but his government, that results of this election have to be seen and felt in the lives of the people of Afghanistan," she said, sitting in a circle of chairs with diplomatic officials from Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, Japan and a host of other nations.

She said the Karzai government understands the international community is "willing to support and encourage the next years of effort of the people and government of Afghanistan, but that we expect outcomes that deliver on security, the buildup of an Afghan national security force as well as a national police force, tangible benefits that flow to the people of Afghanistan and an accountable, transparent government - as far as that can be obtained - as well as a strong stand against corruption."

The meeting, hosted by U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, came before the diplomats were to leave for the palace to attend the inaugural, being held under tight security in the capital.

Clinton said in her conversations with some members of Karzai's Cabinet, she was reassured by the work that was being done in the ministries of agriculture, education, intelligence and finance. Karzai has not announced members of his new Cabinet.

Before entering the meeting, Clinton joked with reporters, telling them they needed to try Afghanistan's pomegranate juice.

"It lowers your cholesterol," she said.

Afghanistan officials hope the export of its pomegranates will raise the sweet, red fruit's cachet and provide its farmers with a lucrative alternative to growing opium, a raw ingredient in heroin. The U.S. has funded an initiative to modernize and expand Afghanistan's pomegranate industry, which has long depended on domestic sales and small-scale exports to nearby countries.

By DEB RIECHMANN, The Associated Press, November 18, 2009

WASHINGTON - President Obama sent his top diplomat to Afghanistan on Wednesday to press President Hamid Karzai to deliver "measurable results" on governance and corruption as the White House prepared specific new demands to accompany an American troop buildup.

In an unannounced visit to Kabul, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Mr. Karzai privately that future civilian aid would depend in part on how his government performed in areas like developing an effective army and curbing cronyism, according to an American official. Publicly, she told reporters that Mr. Karzai had begun to tackle corruption but "not nearly enough."

The trip, coming on the eve of Mr. Karzai's inauguration for a second term after a chaotic election marred by charges of rampant fraud, represented part of a broader effort by the Obama administration to tie the pending troop increase in Afghanistan to more effective efforts by its partners in the region.

The White House is developing "clear targets" for both the Afghan and Pakistani governments, possibly with specific timelines, as a way to signal that the American military presence will not last indefinitely, American officials said. It is not yet clear what the administration is willing to do if the targets are not met.

Among other things, the officials said, the administration will insist that Afghanistan fight corruption, speed up troop training and retention, and funnel development assistance to areas the Taliban dominate. As for Pakistan, the officials said, the White House plan would press Islamabad to keep up pressure on its insurgents as well as on Al Qaeda and, most important, go after militant groups that until now it has not taken on aggressively.

But laying out such benchmarks in the past - most recently in September - did not change the course of events in that region, and aides said Mr. Obama was reluctant to threaten consequences aggressively if the goals were not met. Mrs. Clinton's mention of civilian aid raised one potential point of leverage. The fact that additional American troops will flow into Afghanistan in phases over the next year provides another.

But even if Mr. Karzai is willing to clamp down harder on corruption, he may find it difficult to do so without jettisoning some of the very allies who helped him get re-elected. It is not clear that he is willing to replace enough people to placate critics - or if he did, whether his government could survive.

The new targets are a way of reinforcing the idea that the administration will not simply send more troops to Afghanistan unconditionally and that it envisions eventually beginning to draw down troop numbers after turning over the fight to the Kabul government. In his public comments lately, Mr. Obama has increasingly warned that his is not an "open-ended commitment."

The message has three audiences, officials said. The first is the Afghan people, trying to rebut the Taliban characterization of American forces as occupiers. The second is the Afghan government, which is being told it needs to step up. And the third is the American people, who have grown deeply uneasy about the eight-year-old war.

"The task here is making sure that Afghanistan is sufficiently stable so that we can make that handoff," Mr. Obama told NBC News during his trip to Asia. "So my goal is exactly what you described - creating a situation in which our footprint is smaller and Afghan security forces can do the job of keeping their country together. They're not there yet. They need help from us."

Mr. Obama told CNN that he was "very close to a decision" on how many more troops to send and would announce it "in the next several weeks." He suggested that he would like to be winding down American military involvement in Afghanistan before leaving office. "My preference would be not to hand off anything to the next president," he said.

Mr. Obama has already sent 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan since taking office, bringing the total American force to 68,000. After more than two months of rethinking his strategy, he has decided to send even more and is weighing how many.

Several people briefed on administration deliberations, who like others requested anonymity to discuss delicate matters, said Wednesday that the president's advisers had been testing the reaction to an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 troops, while warning that no decision had been made.

White House officials said that after returning from Asia, Mr. Obama would meet with his national security team on Friday or over the weekend, his ninth such session, but they indicated that no announcement appeared likely until after the Thanksgiving holiday. A senior Senate aide said lawmakers anticipated a decision in time to hold hearings during the week of Nov. 30.

In Kabul, Mr. Karzai begins a second term on Thursday as a leader damaged by a tainted election, strained relations with allies and a record blighted by ineffective management and corruption. His inauguration at this pivotal moment, eight years after Americans began the Afghan war, raises the question of whether the Afghan people or American officials can expect better from him over the next five years.

While Mr. Obama turns up the pressure, Mr. Karzai appears caught among competing imperatives: the West, his supporters and his own instincts to be loyal to tribe and family.

"If Karzai removes all the people who supported him in the election, the warlords, and he doesn't have support from the international community, then he could lose both sides," said Muhammad Noor Akbary, a member of Parliament who worked on Mr. Karzai's campaign. "He has to have some allies."

Many supporters of Mr. Karzai charge his critics in the West with hypocrisy, noting that they helped put him in power. And yet, some in his own circle are also pressing him to clean house, recognizing that widespread corruption and the failure to deliver services are prompting Afghans to turn to the Taliban and other insurgent groups.

"We are asking that they follow through on much of what they have previously said, including putting together a credible anticorruption governmental entity," Mrs. Clinton told reporters traveling with her. "They've done some work on that, but in our view, not nearly enough to demonstrate a seriousness of purpose to tackle corruption."

During her 90-minute private talk with Mr. Karzai, which ran much longer than scheduled, Mrs. Clinton pressed for specific actions like increasing inspectors on American aid programs and certifying Afghan ministries to ensure they do not siphon off money, an American official said. She also pushed Mr. Karzai to make merit-based appointments to senior government positions and take a greater personal role in developing a stand-alone army and police force.

Gen. James L. Jones, the president's national security adviser, made a similar trip to Pakistan late last week, where he pressed that government to do more. Any new list of goals for Pakistan would include taking on the Haqqani militant network along the Afghan border and the Taliban shura, or council, in the southern city of Quetta, both of which the government has been reluctant to confront, an American official said. The administration also wants to expand drone operations north into Chitral and deeper into Bajaur in the north and into portions of Baluchistan in the south, the official said.

Whether timetables will be applied to some of these demands remains undecided, officials said. Deadlines have been set for some goals, like training more Afghan soldiers, and they very likely will be accelerated. But while the White House is seeking to develop an exit strategy, Mr. Obama does not appear likely to set an overall time frame for beginning to withdraw American troops, as he once advocated for Iraq.

"The point here is to put in place very concrete targets that we can use as fulcrums to press for continued success," said an administration official. "It's not meant to be a threat per se, but a statement of reality. It's not a bottomless well."

By Peter Baker and Mark Landler, The New York Times, November 18, 2009

KABUL, Afghanistan - In what amounted to a stern pep talk by a nervous partner, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived here on Wednesday to exhort President Hamid Karzai and his government to do a better job of cracking down on corruption in Afghanistan.

Mrs. Clinton's unannounced visit, on the eve of Mr. Karzai's inauguration to another term, was meant to send a message of American support for his government, after a chaotic election in which he emerged as the winner after charges of rampant ballot stuffing and other fraud.

Mr. Karzai welcomed Mrs. Clinton to the presidential palace on Wednesday evening, and the secretary of state congratulated him on his reelection. "I'm very energized by being back here and seeing you and a lot of your ministers," she said in a polite, if somewhat formal, tone.

"Thank you," he replied with a smile.

But over dinner, and in a subsequent one-on-one session, Mrs. Clinton said she planned to press Mr. Karzai for tangible results in tackling other forms of corruption, which many experts cite as one of the key causes of Afghanistan's growing insurgency and deteriorating security.

"We are asking that they follow through on much of what they previously said, including putting together a credible anti-corruption governmental entity," Mrs. Clinton said to reporters traveling with her from Beijing, where she had been with President Obama on his tour of Asia.

"They've done some work on that, but in our view, not nearly enough to demonstrate a seriousness of purpose to tackle corruption," she said. "We are concerned about corruption. We obviously think it has an impact on the quality and capacity of governance."

Mrs. Clinton said she was troubled that Mr. Karzai named as one of his two vice presidents, Marshal Muhammad Fahim, whom American officials believe has been involved in the drug trade, as well as forging a political alliance with General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a warlord suspected of corruption.

"It certainly raises questions," she said, noting that the United States would wait to see whether Mr. Karzai confronted that issue directly or sought other means to raise confidence in his government.

Still, speaking to employees at the heavily fortified United States embassy, Mrs. Clinton said that the inauguration provided a "window of opportunity" for Mr. Karzai to "make a new compact with the people of Afghanistan" and to create a more accountable government.

"We want to be a strong partner with the government and people of Afghanistan," she said. "This is a turning point that we will face together."

In her fourth visit to Afghanistan, and her first as secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton seemed to be walking a delicate balance - praising Mr. Karzai for the progress Afghanistan had made during his years in power, even as she signaled the United States was looking for more.

"It's not all a one-sided negative story," she said. "It's much more balanced than that. If President Karzai was sitting here, he would say 'do you know how hard it’s been to do what I have done for the last eight years?' "

But Mrs. Clinton also reiterated recent comments by White House and other administration officials that United States was seeking a military strategy that would give it a clear way out of Afghanistan.

"We don't have a long term military stake," she said. "We're not seeking to occupy Afghanistan for the undetermined future. We don't want bases in Afghanistan. We do want to help the Afghan government and people build up their own capacity so they can defend themselves."

Mrs. Clinton was met at the airport by the two generals - Stanley A. McChrystal and Karl W. Eikenberry - who have staked out opposing positions in the administration's lengthy, increasingly fierce, internal debate over how many additional American troops to deploy to Afghanistan.

General McChrystal, the current commander in Afghanistan, has recommended that Mr. Obama send up to 40,000 more troops. General Eikenberry, who is the American ambassador, argued in two recent cables that more troops would increase the dependency of Afghanistan on the United States, at a time when the reliability of its leadership was already in doubt.

In a meeting with the generals, a senior administration official said, Mrs. Clinton quizzed the two about how the United States was meshing its military and civilian efforts in the country. She pressed for examples of areas where those efforts were working well, and where there were problems. General McChrystal offered an overview of the broader security situation.

Whatever their differences on strategy, officials said, there was little evidence of friction in the generals' presentation to Mrs. Clinton. On their assessment of Mr. Karzai's reliability as a leader, an official said, General McChrystal and General Eikenberry were largely in agreement.

Mrs. Clinton also complimented the growing staff of the embassy for their work, which she said was dangerous but vital to the American effort in Afghanistan. She singled out Matthew Sherman, a Foreign Service officer who rescued soldiers from a vehicle that had been overturned by a roadside explosive.

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

PRETORIA, South Africa - The head of the U.S. government's international AIDS campaign says the global recession is not dampening his efforts.

In a telephone interview Wednesday, Eric Goosby acknowledged the economic downturn was a concern, and that other U.S. government departments were cutting back. But he says President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have assured him his program, known as PEPFAR, remains among "the highest priorities."

In South Africa, the country with the world's highest AIDS burden, PEPFAR's budget was to grow from $550 million in the current budget year to $560 million for 2010-11. South Africa is the largest recipient of PEPFAR funds.

International aid groups have expressed fears the global recession threatens AIDS funding.

The Associated Press, November 18, 2009

The United States has no long-term commitment to Afghanistan other than to root al Qaeda from the war-torn nation, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday.

Mrs. Clinton also cautioned that the U.S. was not interested in propping up a corrupt government and reiterated U.S. demands that the recently returned government of Hamid Karzai take clear steps to increase transparency and reduce corruption.

"We're not interested in staying in Afghanistan. We have no long-term stake there. We want that to be made very clear," Mrs. Clinton said on ABC's "This Week."

The former first lady also said the United States would cut off civilian aid to the Afghan government if there is no advances against corruption, including an anti-corruption tribunal and panel.

"I have made it clear that we're not going to be providing any civilian aid to Afghanistan unless we have a certification that if it goes into the Afghan government in any form, that we're going to have ministries that we can hold accountable," Mrs. Clinton said. "There does have to be actions by the government of Afghanistan against those who have taken advantage of the money that has poured into Afghanistan in the last eight years."

In an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Mrs. Clinton said that "we've got some very specific 'asks' that we will be making" in anti-corruption efforts, though she did not elaborate.

Mrs. Clinton's statements come as President Obama inches closer to a decision on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan - a critical strategy choice on how to end what has become an eight-year war.

Mr. Obama promised a quick decision on the matter Friday, at the start of his first trip as president to Asia. He was met by Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's declaration that Japan would no longer refuel ships supplying Afghanistan but would continue to provide other forms of civilian aid.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced a strategy to start drawing British troops out of Afghanistan as soon as Afghan security forces can secure the country but offered no timeline for the drawdown.

Mr. Obama has faced ever-growing pressure to make a decision since news of U.S. forces commander Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's call for up to 60,000 additional troops leaked to the media.

Since then, many Republicans and a handful of Democratic lawmakers have pushed for full support of the McChrystal request, but some liberal Democrats have maintained their push for a specific timetable to bring troops home.

"What we're a little frustrated with [is] during the campaign last year, the president said the Iraq war was the bad war and the Afghan war was the good war," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on "Fox News Sunday." "We are a little bit perplexed about the length of time it's taking to make this decision."

On ABC, Mrs. Clinton criticized the George W. Bush administration for not crafting a successful strategy in Afghanistan.

"We came to do a mission," Mrs. Clinton said. "Unfortunately, it was not achieved in the last eight years. In fact, the mission was changed because it could not be achieved, or it no longer was the primary goal that was expressed in the prior administration."

She also criticized the Bush administration - albeit more vaguely - for engaging in nation-building in Afghanistan and said the Obama team would not focus on that.

"This is not the prior days when people would come on your show and talk about how we were going to help the Afghans build a modern democracy and build a more functioning state and do all of these wonderful things," she told host George Stephanopoulos. "That could happen. But our primary focus is on the security of the United States of America."

By Tom LoBianco, The Washington Times, November 16, 2009

Recognizing that the potential instability of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government remains a main obstacle to an effective American strategy in the region, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton today touted broad accountability procedures in Afghanistan that will aim to combat corruption.

"I have made it clear that we're not going to be providing any civilian aid to Afghanistan unless we have the certification that if it goes into the Afghan government in any form, that we're going to have ministries that we can hold accountable," Clinton said today on ABC's "This Week." "We are expecting there to be a major crimes tribunal, an anti-corruption commission established and functioning, because there does have to be actions by the government of Afghanistan against those who have taken advantage of the money that has poured into Afghanistan in the last eight years."

Regardless of any new benchmarks for the Afghan government, Clinton said that America's security will be the number-one priority for any Obama administration decision in Afghanistan, stressing that president is intent on following a thoughtful and deliberate course in re-evaluating strategy there.

"We agree that our goal here is to defeat al Qaeda," Clinton said. "We understand that the Afghans themselves need help in order to defend themselves against the Taliban. Those are mutually reinforcing missions, but our highest obligation is to the American people. It is to do everything we can to make sure that America is secure, that our allies, our interests around the world are protected. And that is what we're focused on."

Clinton acknowledged the role of Pakistan in combatting further al-Qaeda growth in the region.

"We have made it clear to the Pakistanis, as well as to the Afghans and others, that we want to do everything we can to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda," Clinton said.

Clinton stated that the goal in Afghanistan is obvious, but did not elaborate on how to halt the activities of a stateless, constantly-morphing entity like al-Qaeda.

"Our goal is very clear. We want to get the people who attacked us, and we want to prevent them and their syndicate of terrorism from posing a threat to us, our allies and our interests."

By John Amick, The Washington Post, November 15, 2009

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is stepping up pressure on Pakistan to expand and reorient its fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, warning that failing to do so would undercut the new strategy and troop increase for Afghanistan that President Obama is preparing to approve, American officials say.

While Afghanistan has dominated the public discussion of Mr. Obama's strategy, which officials say could be announced as early as this week, Pakistan is returning to center stage in administration planning. As the president traveled to Asia, his national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, was quietly sent to Islamabad, its capital.

His message, officials said, was that the new American strategy would work only if Pakistan broadened its fight beyond the militants attacking its cities and security forces and went after the groups that use havens in Pakistan for plotting and carrying out attacks against American troops in Afghanistan, as well as support networks for Al Qaeda.

General Jones praised the Pakistani operation in South Waziristan but urged Pakistani officials to combat extremists who fled to North Waziristan.

General Jones also delivered a letter from Mr. Obama to Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, in which Mr. Obama said he expected Mr. Zardari to rally the nation's political and national security institutions in a united campaign against extremists threatening Pakistan and Afghanistan, said an official briefed on the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were confidential.

For their part, Pakistani officials have told the Americans that they harbor two deep fears about Mr. Obama's new strategy: that the United States will add too many troops on the Afghan side of the border, and that the American effort will end too soon.

Their first concern, described by officials on both sides of the recent discussions, is that if Mr. Obama commits an additional 30,000 or more troops, it will inevitably push more Taliban fighters across the border into Pakistani territory and complicate the South Waziristan offensive.

Every time Mr. Obama declares that the United States will not have an "open-ended" military commitment in Afghanistan, he fuels a second concern of the powerful Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, which believes the United States commitment is fleeting.

It is a concern that some of them say justifies Pakistan's continuing ties to the militants who fight American troops in Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to fuel this concern on Sunday in her comments on the ABC program "This Week," saying: "We're not interested in staying in Afghanistan. We have no long-term stake there. We want that to be made very clear."

White House officials have said comparatively little about the Pakistan side of the administration's evolving war strategy, in part because they have so few options. They cannot place forces inside Pakistan, and they cannot talk publicly about the Central Intelligence Agency's Predator drone strikes in the country, though they are so much of an open secret that Mrs. Clinton was asked about them repeatedly in meetings she held late last month with Pakistani students and citizens. (She refused to acknowledge the program's existence.)

In his letter to Mr. Zardari, Mr. Obama offered a range of new incentives to the Pakistanis for their cooperation, including enhanced intelligence sharing and military cooperation, according to the official who had been briefed on the letter's contents.

During Mr. Obama's Situation Room briefings on his alternatives, those advocating a minimal commitment of new troops in Afghanistan have argued that the United States needs only enough forces to keep Al Qaeda "bottled up" in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan.

"You could argue that even under the status quo, we don't see Al Qaeda coming into Afghanistan," said one official sympathetic to this view. "And so an additional commitment of forces isn't going to apply more pressure on our main target."

Those arguing for a more forceful presence - including Mrs. Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen - have contended that while Afghanistan is not now a haven for Al Qaeda, it could easily become one if the Taliban make further inroads.

American officials have praised Pakistan's leaders for finally launching comprehensive military attacks against Taliban forces that have conducted suicide bombings in the capital, on the military headquarters and last week against a key office of the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Service Intelligence directorate.

But the Americans are now trying, as the Bush administration did with little success, to persuade Pakistan to do more, not just against the Qaeda leadership holed up in the country's unruly tribal areas, but also against the Afghan Taliban leadership in the southern Pakistani city of Quetta and the Haqqani militant network in the tribal areas.

Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat who heads the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence and who visited Pakistan last week, summed up the administration’s frustrations and her own after meetings with senior Pakistani officials: "They are focused on who they think are threats to them. Period."

A recurring theme in Mrs. Clinton's visit to Pakistan was the perception that the United States and NATO forces are drawing down troops along the Afghan border with Pakistan. This, Pakistani officials said, allows Afghan militants to pour across the border into South Waziristan, where they become Pakistan's problem.

Mrs. Clinton argued that NATO had actually increased troop levels along that border but had decided to consolidate about a half-dozen remote outposts into fewer, larger installations, because they were easier to defend. According to American military officials, the Pakistani military got no warning of the change.

So great was the Pakistani concern over the outpost closures that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, made a special point during an unannounced trip to Islamabad after Mrs. Clinton's visit to reassure Pakistani officials of American resolve.

"We're stuck between not wanting to suggest we're going to be there forever, but on the other hand, if we don't show some kind of commitment, everyone continues to play the same game," a senior administration official said Sunday. "That's the challenge."

If Pakistanis voice concerns about a lack of American commitment, they express equal concern that sending tens of thousands more American troops to Afghanistan could force Taliban militants into Pakistan.

"Whatever we do - put in more troops or put in fewer troops - they'll freak out," said an American intelligence officer who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his relations with Pakistani officials. But the intelligence officer acknowledged that the long-term security picture and the American commitment in Afghanistan were still unclear. "Look, if I were in Pakistan, I'd be hedging my bets, too," the officer said. "We need to be much more convincing that we have a better game plan."

By Eric Schmidt, The New York Times, November 15, 2009

Could there be a "coffee summit" in the future between Hillary Rodham Clinton - the secretary of state, runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination, former senator and author - and Sarah Palin, author, former Republican vice-presidential candidate and former governor?

In her memoir, "Gping Rogue," Ms. Palin offers a political olive branch to Mrs. Clinton, saying it was only after her own experience on the national campaign trail that she came to agree with the former presidential contender's complaints about biased news coverage.

In an appearance Sunday morning on "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," the host read Mrs. Clinton a passage from the Palin book:

"Should Secretary Clinton and I ever sit down over a cup of coffee, I know that we will fundamentally disagree on many issues. But my hat is off to her hard work on the 2008 campaign trail. A lot of her supporters think she proved what Margaret Thatcher proclaimed: 'If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.' "

Mrs. Clinton smiled and replied, "Well, you know, I've never met her."

"And look," she continued, "I'd look forward to sit down and talk with her. Obviously, we're going to hear a lot more from her in the upcoming weeks with her book coming out, and I would look forward to having a chance to actually get to meet her."

Within hours of that appearance, the blogosphere had already christened a potential tete-a-tete as the "coffee summit."

Ms. Palin resigned as governor of Alaska in July, before the end of her first term, citing a desire to pursue goals outside of elected office.

Mrs. Clinton, asked by Mr. Stephanopoulos on Sunday if she was contemplating a run for the governor's office in New York, promptly used the question to dismiss the suggestion.

"That rumor is dead," she said. "And if you can please, you know, put it in a little box and send it off somewhere, I'd appreciate it."

By SARAH WHEATON, The New York Times, November 15, 2009

Visit marks major change in U.S. policy

SINGAPORE - President Obama on Sunday will become the first American president in more than 40 years to attend a meeting with the repressive rulers of Myanmar, marking a dramatic shift in the U.S. approach to bringing change to a regime that responds brutally to dissent, locks up journalists and political opponents, and has kept itself largely walled off from the Western world.

Formerly known as Burma, Myanmar has for years played the role of skunk in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as ASEAN, repeatedly preventing the group from attracting participation from the United States. But Mr. Obama came to office promising to extend an open hand to rogue states in the hopes of changing the dynamics.

"The policies of the international community have not in two decades produced positive results," said Jeffrey Bader, a special assistant to the president for national security. "One definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome. Twenty years is long enough."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced in February that the U.S. was reviewing its policy toward Myanmar, saying that neither sanctions nor engagement - the preferred policy of Myanmar's neighbors - had nudged the military rulers toward democratic reforms. The new American policy was announced in late September, described as a carrot-and-stick effort, with the U.S. agreeing to talk to the junta and to relax sanctions if conditions are met.

The outreach to Myanmar has come in a series of steps, starting with a visit by Sen. Jim Webb, Virginia Democrat, in August, followed by the recent trip by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Kurt M. Campbell, the first by a high-ranking U.S. official since then-U.N. Ambassador Madeleine K. Albright went to the country in 1995.

Now comes the meeting in Singapore, which the U.S. has touted as the most dramatic display of its change in policy. Host Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said he expects concerns about Myanmar to be discussed at the ASEAN session, though Scot Marciel, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said he does not anticipate any direct talks between Mr. Obama and junta Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein.

Mrs. Clinton told the Voice of America on Friday thatthere were signs of slow change in Myanmar, but that planned voting next year "will not be legitimate unless they engage in a dialogue with the people of Burma and create the atmosphere for free, fair and credible elections."

The meeting could produce some jarring imagery for Mr. Obama, who during a debate with then-presidential rival Mrs. Clinton, said he would be willing to meet - without precondition - with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. "I would," he responded. Mrs. Clinton said she would not. "I don't want to be used for propaganda purposes," she said.

The potential political downside to Mr. Obama's approach became evident in April at a Summit of the Americas meeting. In front of photographers, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez mugged and posed as he handed Mr. Obama a copy of "The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent," a book by Eduardo Galeano that charges U.S. and European economic and political interference in the region.

The White House tried to downplay the significance of the encounter, calling Mr. Chavez a publicity hound. Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow told reporters, "I think the fact that our president shook his hand and smiled doesn't constitute a new relationship."

Critics of the new approach to American policy on the old and vexing problem of Myanmar say it similarly risks giving that country's leaders an opening to obtain an air of international legitimacy. And, they say, it provides the junta something it has not earned - enhanced diplomatic leverage against its increasingly imposing neighbor, China.

"Burma sees China's economic domination as a problem, and it might want to show Beijing it is not its only friend in town," said Sean Turnell, who edits Burma Economic Watch at Australia's Macquarie University. The junta, he said, has a long history of playing outside powers against each other.

Critics have also had questions about the position the U.S. has taken on Myanmar's plans for general elections in 2010, which follow the approval of a new constitution in a referendum held in May 2008. The elections are part of junta leader Gen. Than Shwe's seven-step "road map to democracy."

Mr. Marciel said the U.S. has been urging longtime political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party to participate in the elections if the polls are to be seen as credible. In August, she was sentenced to an additional 18 months' detention for purportedly hosting an unregistered foreign guest. American John Yettaw swam across the lake adjacent to her Rangoon home before being detained by security forces.

As well as being under house arrest, she is currently barred from running for office because of her marriage to a now-deceased British academic. The junta has given no indication so far that Mrs. Suu Kyi will be released, but Gen. Sein recently said that her detention could be relaxed "if she behaved well."

John Dale, a Myanmar specialist at George Mason University, said U.S. officials may inadvertently be setting back the political opposition, which has been organizing a boycott of the elections on the grounds that, under the current constitution, they are destined to be a sham.

"The longer the United States engages in dialogue about international monitoring of free and fair elections, the more likely it is that we end up lending legitimacy to the election process itself," Mr. Dale said.

Mrs. Suu Kyi's party has said it will not compete in the elections without a review of the constitution. Mr. Marciel said the U.S. agrees that the constitution is flawed and was approved in a referendum that "lacked credibility." However, he did not say if the U.S. would back Mrs. Suu Kyi's request for a constitutional review, saying that the issue is best handled among the Burmese.

The approach will not push Myanmar toward real democratic reform, experts say. David Williams, an authority on constitutional law at Indiana University, said he thinks "constitutional reform should be regarded as a central issue in its own right. The current constitution makes long-term reform impossible for our areas of core concern - democracy and human rights abuses. Anything short of constitutional reform will be a Band-Aid."

That said, there appears to be broad agreement that the past policy of isolating Myanmar has not had the desired effect. Douglas H. Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he thinks it was wise of Mr. Obama to start over.

"This is an opportunity to send a signal to the Burmese that the United States is willing to work with them, if they are willing to liberalize their political situation," Mr. Paal said. "The U.S. has been laying down markers where we can make progress."

One important challenge, Mr. Paal said, will be to persuade the other Southeast Asian nations to help the U.S. ratchet up pressure on their recalcitrant neighbor. A new ASEAN charter allows the members more latitude to interfere in one another's affairs.

ASEAN counts Myanmar as a member state and does lucrative business in oil and gas with the junta, giving it some sway over the country's rulers. But there was scant mention of Myanmar at the group's 15th summit held in Thailand in late October. Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said that "engagement is the way forward" when questioned by reporters.

ASEAN inaugurated a new human rights commission at the summit, but the body is limited to the promotion of human rights. It cannot push political reform in Myanmar, which has a junta appointee on the commission.

Bridget Welsh, a professor of Southeast Asian studies at Singapore Management University, said there are "real differences between the U.S. and the junta, but discussing them directly is better than using ASEAN and China to pressure the regime and affecting the U.S.'s relationship with others in Asia." Ms. Welsh added that it is important to keep expectations on progress in Myanmar low for the meantime.

On that score, American officials appear to agree.

"I think that we have made clear we have not changed our objectives," said James Steinberg, deputy secretary of state, in speaking about the president's upcoming trip at the Center for American Progress in early November. "We want to see a more open, tolerant society [that] respects basic human dignity." But, he added that the Obama administration doesn't "pretend for a second that the dialogue will reveal dramatic results."

"This process will take time to produce results, and indeed results are not guaranteed," Mr. Bader said. "It has taken the Burmese military five decades of rule to reach the present unhappy point. We will need patience and persistence to alter the results of 50 years of history, pursuing a path consistent with our interest and values as we seek to do so."

By Matthew Mosk and Simon Roughneen, The Washington Times, November 15, 2009

Joel Brinkley is a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times and now a professor of journalism at Stanford University

Now we can say, with no real doubt, that the Obama administration has suffered its first major foreign-policy failure, and it's hard to see a way to recover.

In fact, the administration's Mideast strategy has been nothing short of a debacle, borne of inexplicable naivete. Couldn't they see that presidents going back more than two decades had asked Israeli and Arab leaders to make exactly the same "gestures" - and none of those presidents had succeeded?

Certainly it is laudable that a new president plunged into this, the oldest major festering sore of the modern world, weeks after taking office. Presidents George W. Bush, Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Reagan, and Carter all paid lip service to the issue until late in their terms. Every one of them realized that the problem was so fraught, the chance of success so faint, that the most likely outcome of any major effort was embarrassment.

That is exactly what happened this time.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton returned home from the Middle East a few days ago furiously arguing, against the facts, that her trip had been something better than a humiliating flop.

Days after taking office, Clinton named former Sen. George Mitchell special envoy for the Middle East. Given his background, that was a strong statement of interest. Mitchell's mission: to convince Arab states that they should offer some gesture toward Israel, as a show of their interest in peace, and to persuade Israel to halt new settlement activity.

Every president over the last 25 years has tried to persuade Israel to stop settlements. Twenty years ago, George H.W. Bush held back $10 billion in loan guarantees until Israel froze settlement expansion. Yitzhak Shamir, the prime minister then, refused. No president since has fared any better. Couldn't Obama see he was taking on a nonstarter? Similarly, every effort over the last 25 years to cajole the Arab states to offer Israel even the most modest gesture has been met with intransigent refusals. Nine months into this futile exercise, Clinton plunged into the debate with full force, putting her reputation on the line.

The Obama administration had already alienated most of the Israeli public by pressuring Israel while "cozying up" to the Arabs, in the Israeli view.

Obama gave a major speech in Cairo to demonstrate American friendship with the region. As president, he has never set foot in Israel. Trying to make amends, Clinton stood beside Benjamin Netanyahu and praised him for his talk about a so-called partial freeze of settlement activity, saying: "What the prime minister has offered in specifics of restraint on the policy of settlements" is "unprecedented."

Not true. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin announced a freeze in new settlement construction in 1995, just as Netanyahu has done. That "freeze" quickly thawed. Religious zealots ignored the rule, and the government did little to stop them. The same is likely to happen now.

More important, however, is this: As soon as the Obama administration announced that settlements were America's singular issue with Israel, every major actor in the Arab world seized on settlements - long an item on their list of grievances, but now all of a sudden their No. 1 complaint. And when Clinton told Netanyahu his "restraint" was "unprecedented," all of them erupted with anger and dismay.

For the next several days, Clinton had to backpedal and try to explain away her remarks, saying, in Cairo, "The Israeli offer was not at all what we prefer. It did not go far enough. But it went farther than anyone has before."

Well, remarks like that left both sides feeling unsatisfied, even offended. The next day, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, announced that he was discouraged and disgusted and would not run for office again. In truth, Palestinians (and Israelis) often announce resignations one day and then change their minds the next. It's a negotiating tactic.

Still, even with his many flaws, Abbas is irreplaceable, the one Palestinian who is a credible, eager partner with the West. The day before his resignation statement, Clinton pointedly noted "how important it was for President Abbas to continue his leadership and his commitment to the two-state solution."

Now, however, the Obama administration's Middle East strategy is such a mess that it may not even matter if Abbas resigns. Obama's meeting with Netanyahu on Monday night appeared to accomplish little. At this point, it's hard to see how anyone can put the pieces back together again.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 15, 2009

MANILA, Philippines - Next month's climate change summit in Copenhagen is not likely to produce a legally binding treaty to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that are widely blamed for global warming, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday.

Speaking to a town hall meeting of students at a university in the Philippine capital, Clinton said the Obama administration would push instead for a strong "framework agreement" that could become a template for an eventual enforceable pact.

"We are going to go to Copenhagen 100-percent committed to creating a framework agreement," she said. "We doubt that we can get to the legally binding agreement that everyone wants because too many countries have too many questions."

"But we do think that we can come up with a very strong framework agreement," Clinton told an audience at Manila's University of Santo Tomas.

Her comments echoed those she made earlier in the week at a meeting of Asia-Pacific foreign ministers in Singapore. That meeting precedes a weekend summit in Singapore of Pacific Rim leaders, including President Barack Obama, at which climate change will be a major topic.

"We cannot let the pursuit of perfection get in the way of progress," Clinton told a news conference on Wednesday, urging countries, many in Europe, that are insisting on forging a full-on treaty at the Dec. 7-18 Copenhagen talks to scale back their ambitions.

"If we all exert maximum effort and embrace the right blend of pragmatism and principle, I believe we can secure a strong outcome at Copenhagen and that would be a stepping stone toward full legal agreement," she said.

She added that the Obama administration remained committed to a "global legally binding climate agreement and will continue working vigorously with the international community towards that end."

But she stressed that "a final deal will not necessarily come quickly or easily."

At least 40 world leaders have said they plan to attend the Copenhagen conference, which follows two years of tough U.N.-led negotiations to draft a climate change agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

They include British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende. Obama has said he may come but has not yet committed.

The U.S., which shunned the Kyoto Protocol during former President George W. Bush's eight years in office, is seen as the linchpin to a deal. But it has been unable to present a position or pledge emission cut targets because of the slow pace of climate legislation in Congress.

Clinton said the framework agreement the U.S. seeks must have several elements: promises from all nations to do their fair share to reduce emissions, to transfer necessary technology, to commit to reduction targets or actions to that end, to ensure accountability with domestic pledges, and to assist developing nations with a global climate fund.

U.N. scientists say rich countries must cut carbon emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 to prevent Earth's temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius (4 degrees Fahrenheit) above its average temperature before the industrial era began 150 years ago. Any rise beyond that could trigger climate catastrophe, they say.

So far, reduction pledges total 11 percent to 15 percent, but those could be seen as negotiable.

The European Union - which has said it hopes to lead global climate policy - says it will meet or exceed its target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2012.

By 2020, the 27-member EU has vowed to slash emissions by 20 percent, and said it would step that up to 30 percent if the United States, China and other nations also pledge ambitious cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

By Matthew Lee, The Associated Press, November 13, 2009

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine president signed a bill criminalizing all forms of torture and prohibiting state authorities from using secret detention centers, her spokesman announced Friday.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's government, which has been fighting communist and Muslim insurgencies, has come under severe criticism from international rights groups, the U.S. State Department, and a U.N. investigator on extrajudicial killings in the deaths of hundreds of left-wing activists.

Officials said the deaths were not sanctioned by the state. Government and human rights groups differ on how many people have died, with some estimates as high as 1,000.

The announcement came as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was visiting the country.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch had urged Clinton to raise concerns during her visit to Manila on Thursday and Friday over hundreds of people allegedly killed by state forces since Arroyo came to power in 2001, and inadequate efforts to prosecute military personnel believed responsible.

Clinton told a forum in Manila that she raised the human rights issue during her talk with Arroyo and the State Department has pointed out areas it believes could be improved.

"We will continue to raise questions but we will also continue, as a friend does, to offer whatever assistance we can," she said, including training and support to ensure government institutions are protecting human rights.

The law defines torture as any act - physical or psychological - by which severe suffering is inflicted by a person in authority or his agent to get information or a confession.

It provides penalties of up to life imprisonment, depending on the gravity of the offense, and renders evidence obtained through torture as inadmissible in any proceeding.

The law also requires the military and police to submit a monthly report listing all detention centers to the independent Commission on Human Rights.

The Associated Press, November 13, 2009

MANILA, Philippines - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is in the Philippines on a visit to show support for country's fight against extremists and its efforts to rebuild after three major storms rocked the islands.

Clinton arrived in the capital Manila on Thursday from Singapore and was meeting with top Filipino officials as well as touring U.S.-funded disaster relief projects. Her one-day trip also will focus on countering Muslim extremists who are operating in the country's south.

Despite years of U.S. military training and assistance, Filipino troops have struggled to contain the militants, who have recently intensified attacks, blowing up bridges, firing mortar shells and setting off roadside bombs.

The Associated Press, November 11, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton today called U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen a "steppingstone" toward a global, legally binding climate agreement, and spelled out U.S. priorities for the talks.

Her comments at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Singapore are an acknowledgement from the nation's top diplomat that next month's talks will not result in a final international deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

But Clinton also said the meeting would be pivotal and declared that the United States -- the world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases behind China -- is "prepared to assume our share of responsibility" to address climate change.

"If we all exert maximum effort and embrace the right blend of pragmatism and principle, I believe we can secure a strong outcome at Copenhagen, and that would be a steppingstone toward full legal agreement," she said.

Clinton warned against allowing the "pursuit of perfection" to block progress, but added that there are nonetheless metrics the United States will use to judge the outcome of the talks, which run Dec. 7-18.

The first, she said, is that all countries do their fair share. The next, she said, is that a deal should cover all major issues, which she said include adaptation, financing, technology cooperation, dissemination of technology and forest preservation.

Clinton also said the talks should address funding mechanisms to help developing nations.

"We are prepared to support a global climate fund that will support adaptation and mitigation efforts and a matching entity to help developing countries match needs with available resources," Clinton said.

"Funding through the new global climate fund and a technology mechanism will help developing countries identify what they need, where to get it, and how to finance, operate and maintain it," she said.

Clinton's view that Copenhagen won't result in a final deal reflects the views of other key negotiators.

"I don't think we can get a legally binding agreement by Copenhagen," U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said earlier this month in Barcelona, Spain.

"I think that we can get that within a year after Copenhagen," he said.

The International Energy Agency issued a stark warning yesterday that time is of the essence to reach an emissions-cutting deal. Delays will make it harder to limit global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius and add massive costs to the $10.5 trillion the agency believes will be needed by 2030 to shift to low-carbon energy sources.

"We calculate that each year of delay before moving onto the emissions path consistent with a 2°C temperature increase would add approximately $500 billion to the global incremental investment cost of $10.5 trillion for the period 2010-2030," the IEA said in its 2009 World Energy Outlook. "A delay of just a few years would probably render that goal completely out of reach."

By BEN GEMAN, Greenwire, November 11, 2009

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are coalescing around a proposal to send 30,000 or more additional American troops to Afghanistan, but President Obama remains unsatisfied with answers he has gotten about how vigorously the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan would help execute a new strategy, administration officials said Tuesday.

Mr. Obama is to consider four final options in a meeting with his national security team on Wednesday, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, told reporters. The options outline different troop levels, other officials said, but they also assume different goals - including how much of Afghanistan the troops would seek to control - and different time frames and expectations for the training of Afghan security forces.

Three of the options call for specific levels of additional troops. The low-end option would add 20,000 to 25,000 troops, a middle option calls for about 30,000, and another embraces Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's request for roughly 40,000 more troops. Administration officials said that a fourth option was added only in the past few days. They declined to identify any troop level attached to it.

Mr. Gates, a Republican who served as President George W. Bush's last defense secretary, and who commands considerable respect from the president, is expected to be pivotal in Mr. Obama's decision. But administration officials cautioned that Mr. Obama had not yet made up his mind, and that other top advisers, among them Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, remained skeptical of the value of a buildup.

In the Situation Room meetings and other sessions, some officials have expressed deep reservations about President Hamid Karzai, who emerged the victor of a disputed Afghan election. They said there was no evidence that Mr. Karzai would carry through on promises to crack down on corruption or the drug trade or that his government was capable of training enough reliable Afghan troops and police officers for Mr. Obama to describe a credible exit strategy.

Officials said that although the president had no doubt about what large numbers of United States troops could achieve on their own in Afghanistan, he repeatedly asked questions during recent meetings on Afghanistan about whether a sizable American force might undercut the urgency of the preparations of the Afghan forces who are learning to stand up on their own.

"He's simply not convinced yet that you can do a lasting counterinsurgency strategy if there is no one to hand it off to," one participant said.

Mr. Obama, officials said, has expressed similar concerns about Pakistan's willingness to attack Taliban leaders who are operating out of the Pakistani city of Quetta and commanding forces that are mounting attacks across the border in Afghanistan. While Pakistan has mounted military operations against some Taliban groups in recent weeks, one official noted, "it's been focused on the Taliban who are targeting the Pakistani government, but not those who are running operations in Afghanistan."

Mr. Obama himself seems to be hedging his bets, particularly on the performance of Mr. Karzai, who is considered by American officials to be an unreliable partner and is now widely derided in the White House. Mr. Obama told ABC News during an interview on Monday that given the weakness of the Karzai government in Kabul, his administration was seeking "provincial government actors that have legitimacy in the right now."

Officials said that while Admiral Mullen and Mrs. Clinton were generally in sync with Mr. Gates in supporting an option of about 30,000 troops, there were variations in their positions and they were not working in lock step. Admiral Mullen's spokesman, Capt. John Kirby, said that the admiral was providing his advice to the president in private and would not comment. Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, would not comment on Mr. Gates's position.

A focus of Mr. Obama's meeting on Wednesday with his national security advisers, officials said, will be to discuss some of their differences as well as those of the president's other advisers. Officials also said there was a possibility that Mr. Obama might choose to phase in additional troops over time, with a schedule that depended on the timing of the arrival of any additional NATO troops and on how soon Afghan security forces would be able to do more on their own.

Officials said that no decision was expected from Mr. Obama on Wednesday, but that he would mull over the discussions at the meeting during a trip to Asia that begins Thursday. Mr. Obama is not due back in Washington until next Thursday. Officials said that it was possible that he could announce his decision in the three days before Thanksgiving, which is on Nov. 26, but that an announcement in the first week of December seemed more likely.

Should Mr. Obama choose to send about 30,000 troops, a military official said, brigades would most likely be sent from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. In addition, 4,000 troops would be sent as trainers for the Afghan security forces, the military official said. A brigade is about 3,500 to 5,000 soldiers.

Senator Jack Redd, the Rhode Island Democrat who has been an influential adviser in the Afghanistan debate, said that one of the most difficult issues was determining the effects of a large American troop presence on the country.

"It's more about, hey, are we creating such a large footprint that it's easier for the Afghans to walk way from their responsibility?" Mr. Reed said. "I don't think that's one that can be resolved. You're making a judgment about that one, and not one you can solve with arithmetic."

By Elisabeth Bumiller and Davie E. Sanger, The New York Times, November 10, 2009

WASHINGTON - After months of delays because of tangled vetting procedures, the Obama administration on Tuesday named a former executive with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to run its main foreign aid arm, the United States Agency for International Development.

The official, Rajiv J. Shah, a medical doctor and health economist now at the Agriculture Department, would take over an agency whose power and profile have eroded in recent years, but which is enmeshed in some of the administration's toughest challenges, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Dr. Shah's appointment, if confirmed by the Senate, would bring an end to 10 months of leadership drift at the agency that has deeply frustrated Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mrs. Clinton placed development at the heart of her diplomatic agenda, but she has struggled to find a candidate who could navigate the exhaustive confirmation process.

Paul Farmer, a renowned physician and anthropologist who has run public health programs in Rwanda and Haiti, was one of several candidates who withdrew his name for the post, citing the intrusiveness of the process. In July, Mrs. Clinton publicly vented her anger, saying the confirmation process was "ridiculous" and "frustrating beyond words."

The leadership vacuum at the agency has become especially acute as the Obama administration has stepped up the deployment of civilian personnel to Afghanistan. The Agriculture Department has taken the lead in one of the most ambitious efforts: sending agricultural economists to advise farmers on how to wean themselves off poppies and move into legal crops.

Dr. Shah, 36, served as the director of agricultural development and managed a $1.5 billion investment in a vaccine fund for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. At the Agriculture Department, he is the chief scientist and under secretary for research, education and economics. He is also active in the administration's global food security initiative.

"He's an extraordinary talent," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. "He's brilliant, but has not lost his common touch in his capacity to reach people."

In a statement from Singapore, where she was traveling, Mrs. Clinton said Dr. Shah would bring "an impressive record of accomplishment and a deep understanding of what works in development."

Dr. Shah, whose family immigrated to the United States from India, also has political connections, having campaigned for President Obama and served as a health policy adviser to former Vice President Al Gore during Mr. Gore's presidential campaign.

Development experts said they were pleased by Dr. Shah's appointment, but even more pleased that the administration had finally found someone to fill the job. Because Dr. Shah has already been confirmed by the Senate once before, the administration is hopeful that he will be approved quickly.

"This administration has inherited a very weak and fragmented Usaid and aid infrastructure," said David Beckmann, the president of Bread for the World, a Christian group that advocates for hunger relief. "By getting someone in that position, Mrs. Clinton has taken a step forward."

Mr. Beckmann called for Mr. Obama to restore the agency's profile by giving Dr. Shah a seat on the National Security Council, and for Mrs. Clinton to give back its independent budget and policy-making authority, which had been subsumed by the State Department.

By Mark Landler, The New York Times, November 10, 2009

SINGAPORE - The Starbucks nook at Singapore's cavernous Suntec convention centre received a star guest Wednesday, but didn't make a sale.

Manager David Lim doesn't mind. Just the fact that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sat in his restaurant for about 30 minutes was enough to make his day. "She's a very powerful woman," Lim told The Associated Press, adding that she is the most famous customer he has received in the six years that the branch has existed there.

Clinton took a break from her meetings of the Asia-Pacific-Economic Cooperation forum and descended down an escalator from Level 2 with a few aides and bodyguards.

Without fanfare, America's top diplomat, dressed in a dark blue business suit and sunglasses, settled at one of the tables outside the coffee shop and was joined minutes later by U.S. Congressman Sander Levin, a Democrat from Michigan.

While they chatted, four Diplomatic Security agents took up positions on four sides some distance away. Clinton did not order anything but three of the agents got lattes and cappuccinos for themselves.

"They came by very quietly," said the 33-year-old Lim. "Suddenly, this branch has become historic, an icon. I feel lucky."

He did not take any pictures but two female customers approached Clinton and asked to take a photo with her. Clinton agreed.

Lim said he hopes President Barack Obama will also stop by when he attends the APEC summit on Sunday.

Unlikely. He will be in Singapore for less than 24 hours and the summit will be at the presidential palace, a few miles (kilometres) from the Starbucks.

By Jim Gomez, The Canadian Press, November 10, 2009

SINGAPORE - Asia-Pacific ministers warned Wednesday that signs of recovery in the global economy are merely a respite, and future growth hinges on freer trade and improved social safety nets in Asia.

Finance and foreign ministers meeting in Singapore for this week's annual APEC meeting are mulling ways to keep economic recovery going once lavish stimulus spending ebbs, while tackling other regional security and political issues.

The forum culminates in a weekend summit of heads of state from APEC's 21 economies, including Canada.

The economic crisis is "by no means over," warned Singapore's foreign minister, George Yeo, urging nations to persist in opening markets wider.

"There is creeping protectionism now; that is very dangerous. It is a slippery slope, and if we're not careful, before we know it, all of us will be in a much more dire situation," he told reporters after hosting a breakfast meeting with foreign ministers.

The ministers agreed the economic crisis is in a respite, Yeo said, but recovery remains fragile.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged fellow leaders to forge ahead with plans to combat global warming and to help push Myanmar's military regime toward greater democracy.

She called for calm in the aftermath of a naval skirmish Tuesday between North and South Korea, but said it would not scupper plans to send envoy Stephen Bosworth to Pyongyang to persuade the regime to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks.

But the main focus for the regional dialogue remained the economy, and APEC nations are looking to the U.S. to add heft to efforts to push for a global trade pact and help dismantle trade barriers to help along the recovery.

APEC was founded 20 years ago to promote greater trade and integration around the Pacific Rim. Its scope has since expanded to encompass a wide range of issues, and ministers Wednesday stressed the need for action on climate change, energy security and ensuring food security for the millions of vulnerable poor in the region.

Boosting exports is the "best ticket" to creating jobs, ending the recession and bringing massive deficits under control, said Thomas J. Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"Expanding free trade across the Pacific can drive the global economic recovery, create badly needed jobs and advance economic and social progress in developing and developed countries alike," he told business leaders on the sidelines of the APEC meeting.

While Asia has 168 free-trade agreements, work on U.S. pacts with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama languish in Washington.

The Pacific Economic Co-operation Council, an APEC-affiliated think-tank , urged in a report issued Wednesday for fundamental reforms to shift growth away from a dependence on exports to the U.S.

"U.S. consumers are not likely to drive world demand in the medium term, and the slack will have to be taken up in part by Asian consumption and investment," Peter Petri, a Brandeis University professor who co-ordinated a regional task force on the economic crisis, said in the report.

The think-tank 's survey of 400 business, government and expert leaders in the region found many convinced that the engines of growth are changing - a trend long anticipated but accelerated by the relatively strong recent performances of developing Asian nations, especially China and India.

"They are very conscious that the U.S. is not going to be the growth engine for the foreseeable future, and they are thinking very hard of how to find other ways to generate growth," said Yuen Pau Woo, who co-ordinated the report.

President Barack Obama, visiting Asia for the first time since he took office in January, will be seeking to counter the perception of declining U.S. power.

The president wants "to send a message that the United States intends to deepen its engagement in this part of the world; that we intend to compete in this part of the world; and that we intend to be a leader in this part of the world," Jeffrey Bader, a National Security Council official, told reporters from Washington.

Still, with the U.S. economy growing at less than half the rate of China's 8.9 per cent in the third-quarter, and consumer demand still languishing amid a so-far job-scarce recovery, Asia's pivotal role is evident.

"The engines of growth are shifting from the U.S. to Asia; from exports to domestic spending, especially on social priorities and from production of goods to production of services," Woo said.

Higher spending on social needs such as education, health care, services for the aging and welfare networks; freer trade in services, and policies to promote green technologies - all can contribute, he said.

Devoting more to those resources would help rebalance the wide gap in U.S.-China trade, among other distortions, that helped bring on the crisis.

By boosting social spending, China and other Asian nations could help reduce the need among their citizens to scrimp and save to cover such costs, freeing them to improve living standards and spend more.

The report estimates that $300 billion of the $28.8 trillion in regional economic activity represents trade and other imbalances that need to be redressed.

By Elaine Kurtenbach, The Canadian Press, November 11, 2009

SINGAPORE - A naval skirmish this week between the two Koreas will not affect Washington's decision to send a senior diplomat to communist North Korea, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday.

Clinton, speaking on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Singapore, said envoy Stephen Bosworth will go to North Korea "in the near future" in an attempt to persuade it to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks.

"This does not in any way affect our decision to send Ambassador Bosworth. We think it is an important step that stands on its own," she said.

The talks will be the first between the U.S. and North Korea since President Barack Obama took office in January. The two nations, which fought on opposite sides in the 1950-53 Korean War, do not have diplomatic relations.

Clinton said Bosworth will not negotiate with North Korea but will seek to pave the way for its return to the disarmament talks, which also involve China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.

North Korea quit the negotiations earlier this year in anger over international criticism of its nuclear and missile programs, but has reached out to Washington in recent months with calls for bilateral talks.

The Obama administration has said it is open to holding direct talks with North Korea if they lead to a resumption of the disarmament negotiations. U.S. officials confirmed Tuesday that Bosworth, Obama's envoy to North Korea, would meet with North Korean officials, most likely before the end of the year.

"We have made the purpose and parameters of this visit clear to the North Koreans," Clinton told a news conference at APEC. "This is not a negotiation. It is an effort to pave the way toward North Korea's return to the six-party process."

"Let me emphasize that our expectations of Pyongyang have not changed and will not change, nor has our commitment to the six-party process," she said. "We will use diplomacy and we will work closely with our partners to find a peaceful path to our shared objective on the Korean peninsula."

A two-minute exchange of gunfire Tuesday between North and South Korean warships at the Koreas' disputed maritime border reportedly left one North Korean sailor dead and three wounded. The South Korean military reported no casualties. Deadly skirmishes at the disputed sea border off the west coast also took place in 1999 and 2002.

"There have been flare-ups of the sort we have seen over the last day between North and South Korea over a number of years. There is a set of issues around territorial waters that often serve as a backdrop to this kind of confrontation," Clinton said.

She called for calm.

"We are certainly counseling calm and caution when it comes to any kind of dispute, especially one that can cause repercussions and damage that could be quite difficult to contend with."

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

SINGAPORE - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that Washington will not impose new conditions on Myanmar's junta in exchange for better relations, but will not lift sanctions until it makes progress on democracy.

Clinton's comments reflect an easing of U.S. policy on Myanmar, which has been ruled by the military since 1962. The junta has been widely criticized for holding pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, under detention.

Clinton, who met Wednesday with the foreign ministers of Asia-Pacific countries ahead of a regional summit, said she "reiterated that U.S. sanctions will remain in place until we see meaningful progress in key areas."

She told reporters that China, India and the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations also must play a greater role in pushing Myanmar's junta toward democracy.

Asked if the United States has set any conditions, including the return of Suu Kyi to political life, for improving relations with Myanmar, Clinton made it clear that the U.S. is now committed to engaging the generals rather than ostracizing them.

"This has to be resolved within the Burmese people themselves. We are not setting or dictating any conditions," she said. Myanmar is also known as Burma.

But a senior U.S. official later said that Suu Kyi's release and return to politics would be "an essential precondition to move forward." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing internal administration thinking.

Last week, two senior U.S. diplomats went to Myanmar for talks with the junta and also had a private meeting with Suu Kyi. It was the highest-level U.S. visit to Myanmar in 14 years.

Clinton said although the visit was constructive, "there is a lot of work to do. We have no illusions that any of this would be easy or quick."

On Sunday, President Barack Obama will attend the first-ever meeting of U.S. and ASEAN leaders on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. He is to sit at the same table with Myanmar Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein.

The Myanmar government has said it intends to hold elections next year but has not clarified whether Suu Kyi will be allowed to participate.

The junta refused to honor the result of the last elections in 1990 when Suu Kyi's party won by a landslide. Suu Kyi has spent 14 of the last 20 years in detention, and remains under house arrest.

Clinton said the U.S. wants to create the opportunity for the people of Myanmar to have "free and credible elections" next year.

"This is a very challenging situation as many of the countries can attest but the U.S. is committed to moving forward," she said.

After the U.S.-ASEAN meeting, the leaders are expected to issue a joint call urging Myanmar to hold "free, fair, inclusive and transparent" elections.

"The statement we're trying to make here is that we're not going to let the Burmese tail wag the ASEAN dog," Jeffrey Bader, a National Security Council official, told reporters in Washington, D.C.

By VIJAY JOSHI, The Associated Press, November 11, 2009