COPENHAGEN - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to put new life into flagging U.N. climate talks Thursday, announcing the U.S. would join others in raising $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poorer nations cope with global warming.

She made the offer contingent on reaching a broader agreement at the 193-nation conference that covers "transparency," a reference to U.S. insistence that China allow some international review of its actions controlling emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

China followed by saying it is willing to provide explanations and clarification on its actions to control carbon emissions, going some way to meeting the U.S. demands.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said Beijing is ready for "dialogue and cooperation that is not intrusive that does not infringe on China's sovereignty."

The diplomatic duel between Washington and Beijing has marked the two weeks of climate talks, which ground to a near-halt Wednesday as a chronic rich-poor divide flared into the open again, dimming the hopes of the Danish hosts for a comprehensive deal - a preliminary framework for a formal treaty next year on combating climate change.

Environment ministers, having taken over from lower-level negotiators, got down to the final hours of talks Thursday in hopes of producing partial agreements to put before President Barack Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and more than 110 other leaders at Friday's summit.

Such accords might include the issues raised by Clinton at a news conference here: long-term goals for financing climate aid, and monitoring of emission controls.

The Clinton offer represented the first time the U.S. government has publicly cited a figure in discussions here over long-term financing to help poorer countries build sea walls against rising oceans, cope with unusual drought and deal with other impacts of climate change, while also financing renewable-energy and similar projects.

The $100 billion, a number first suggested by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, falls short of what experts say would be needed. The World Bank and others estimate the long-term climate costs for poorer nations, from 2020 or so, would likely total hundreds of billions of dollars a year. China and other developing countries say the target should be in the range of $350 billion.

In addition, the developing nations want long-term financial support based on stable revenue sources, such as an aviation tax that might be the goal of future international climate talks.

"It's good there's now been a statement of support for a clear number on long-term finance," U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said of the U.S. offer. "This discussion will have to take place with other parties, whether they feel that sum is adequate."

More immediately, the conference has been discussing a short-term climate fund to help developing countries - a $10 billion-a-year, three-year program. European Union leaders last week committed to supplying $3.6 billion a year through 2012. On Wednesday, Japan, seeking to "contribute to the success" of Copenhagen, announced it would kick in $5 billion a year for three years.

U.S. funding is hovering at only around $1 billion this year, and Clinton, when asked, did not specify how much Washington would contribute to the "fast start" package.

"We'll do our proportion of `fast start'," the secretary of state said.

De Boer commented afterward, "I'm keenly looking forward to hearing what the U.S. contribution to that fund will be."

The "transparency" issue relates to recent pledges by such major developing countries as China, India and Brazil to rein in the growth of their emissions by specific amounts - on a voluntary basis.

Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, 37 industrialized nations that must cut their emissions - not including the U.S., which rejects Kyoto - are required to file detailed reports to the U.N., where they are subject to review.

China and other developing nations were not required to reduce emissions under Kyoto or file regular greenhouse-gas "inventories." Now that they have pledged voluntary controls, the United States wants their emissions actions to be "measurable, reportable and verifiable," in U.N. terminology.

The Chinese had resisted what they see as a potential intrusion on their sovereignty. But without that, Clinton told reporters, "there will not be the kind of concerted global action that we so desperately need."

The issue is particularly sensitive in the U.S. Congress, where members want to ensure China is living up to its own internal commitments. "It's essential for the global effort, but their internal efforts as well," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters in Copenhagen.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said he had discussed the issue with Chinese officials Wednesday and progress was being made. Conference observer Jake Schmidt, of the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council, suggested the Chinese might satisfy their critics by submitting yearly reports, with more detail.

The detailed talks on a range of issues - from emissions commitments, to preventing deforestation, to transferring clean-energy technology - reached an impasse Wednesday when developing nations objected to the process that produced a core draft document.

In a reprise of a perennial complaint at the annual conferences, the poorer nations said they were being excluded from the drafting of the text, that wealthier nations' views were being imposed on the developing world.

But organizers of the U.N. conference probably will not get the climate deal they had hoped for, one Danish official said Thursday. The official was not authorized to talk publicly about the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The European Union later issued a statement expressing concern over "the lack of progress in the negotiations."

Meantime, the U.S. came under renewed pressure to improve its pledge of greenhouse-gas emission cutbacks - by about 17 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 figures. That's only a 3 percent to 4 percent reduction from 1990, the benchmark year for the Kyoto countries and the basis for the EU's pledge to cut emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020.

"I have to be honest, an offer by the United States to cut only 4 percent from 1990 levels is not ambitious enough," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told lawmakers in Berlin before arriving in Copenhagen.

One expert analysis of industrialized countries' current pledges on emissions in 2020 find that in aggregate they amount to 8 percent to 12 percent below 1990 levels, far below the 25 percent to 40 percent recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N. scientific network.

Climate Action Network International, the coalition of environmental groups at the conference, estimate that emissions path would raise global temperatures about 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) by midcentury, well beyond what scientists say is a 2-degree C (3.6-degree F) threshold for seriously damaging climate change.

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, The Associated Press, December 17, 2009

COPENHAGEN - With time running out on the stalled Copenhagen climate negotiations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave new hope that an agreement might still be reached when she announced Thursday that the United States would help raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor nations combat climate change.

The talks are scheduled to end Friday, when President Obama and more than 100 other heads of state are due to arrive.

Mrs. Clinton's announcement signaled the first time the Obama administration had made a commitment to a medium-term financing effort, even though she did not specify the American contribution to this fund. She also cautioned that the United States' participation was contingent on reaching a firm agreement this week, one that would require a commitment from China about greater transparency in its emissions reporting.

"A hundred billion can have tangible effects," Mrs. Clinton said. "We actually think $100 billion is appropriate, usable and will be effective."

The $100 billion figure is in line with estimates by Britain and the European Union of the needed contributions, although the amount is at the low end of the range that European countries have suggested.

Shortly after Ms. Clinton's announcement, Yvo de Boer, the head of the United Nations climate office, welcomed the decision by the United States to support the fund and said he saw it as a sign that negotiations were making some progress.

"Hold tight," Mr. de Boer said. "Mind the doors. The cable car is moving again."

But Mr. de Boer also sounded some cautious notes, saying that it was important to wait and see "if that sum is adequate" in the view of other nations, and he called on the Americans to put a specific amount of money on the table for the fund. Mr. de Boer also underlined that structures would need to be drawn up to control the disbursement and management of the money.

Mrs. Clinton said the money would be a mix of public and private funds, including "alternative sources of finance," which she did not specify. Nor did she say what the American share of the fund would be, although typically in such multilateral financial efforts the United States contributes about 20 percent. She said the money should chiefly flow to the poorest and most vulnerable nations and should contain a sizable amount to slow deforestation, which contributes to carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

The British government released a statement shortly commending Mrs. Clinton's announcement.

"It's an important development and very welcome to have the United States on the same page as the U.K. and the E.U. in terms of long term climate finance," the statement read.

The announcement from the United States seemed to shift the pessimistic tone of the talks in which China had signaled overnight that it saw virtually no possibility that the nearly 200 nations gathered would find agreement by Friday.

A participant in the talks said that China would agree only to a brief political declaration that left unresolved virtually all the major issues.

The conference has been deadlocked over emissions cuts by, and financing for, developing nations, including China, who say they will bear the brunt of a planetary problem they did little to create. Leaders had hoped to conclude an interim agreement on the major issues that would have "immediate operational effect." The Chinese, it appears, are not willing to go that far at this meeting.

Whether the Chinese position represents political brinkmanship as senior ministers and heads of state begin arriving in Copenhagen for the final 48 hours of negotiations, or a genuine signal that Chinese officials are not inclined to settle the wide differences separating it and developed nations, was unclear on Thursday morning.

Until Mrs. Clinton's announcement on Thursday, the world's two richest blocs, the European Union and the United States, had been slow to put pledges on the table for long-term financing, which under most estimates would require them to pay billions of dollars each year by 2020. Last Friday, European Union leaders agreed on short-term financing totaling $10.5 billion over the next three years to help poor countries begin tackling the effects of global warming. But the bloc has so far failed to agree how much they would give in long-term financing. European experts have recommended that the fund should total about $150 billion annually by the end of the next decade.

Until Mrs. Clinton's announcement, the continued bickering among delegations had seemed to be making the likelihood of a significant breakthrough increasingly slim.

On Wednesday night, Mr. de Boer seemed skeptical. but warned that "the next 24 hours are absolutely crucial and need to be used productively."

The continued deadlock is due in large measure to delays and diversions created by a group of poor and emerging nations intent on making their dissatisfaction clear. The Group of 77, as it is called, has raised repeated objections to what its members see as the economic and environmental tyranny of the industrial world.

On Monday, African nations briefly brought the climate talks to a standstill. China, by far the largest economic power in the group, has dragged its feet throughout the week by raising one technical objection after another to the basic negotiating text. And on Wednesday night, the group refused to take part in negotiations that conference organizers had hoped would produce a definitive negotiating text by Thursday morning. Instead, many Group of 77 leaders spent the day hurling accusations at wealthier countries.

President Obama and other world leaders have said that the Copenhagen meetings are unlikely to produce a binding treaty; some sort of interim political agreement is far more likely, they said. But few appreciated the depth of anger in the developing world and the height of grandstanding that would consume so much of the conference's time. Now it is hard to find someone who confidently predicts even that much success.

The Group of 77 is a group in name only. Made up of 130 countries, it represents tiny island nations like Vanuatu and advanced middle-income states like Argentina. Many developing nations have united under the group's auspices because they can take advantage of the far greater negotiating power and resources of countries like China and Brazil. Many small countries have neither a big enough delegation nor the organizational structure to negotiate effectively on their own.

China has been a natural godfather to many of the Group of 77 countries because its government has extensive investments in Africa and Latin America, often involving lucrative deals to bring oil and minerals home.

The coalition is united on a few central issues. They include making sure that industrialized countries keep the emissions reductions pledges they made as part of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and that the Copenhagen conference produces enough money for poorer countries to adapt to climate change, said Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuador's minister of cultural and ecological patrimony.

But the group is neither a tight negotiating unit, nor particularly well organized. While larger countries like Brazil and China have well-appointed headquarters in one part of the Bella Center, where the negotiations are being held, the Group of 77 office itself is made up of two spartan rooms equipped with two computers, where some delegates from the poorest African nations sat Wednesday morning drinking soda and nibbling biscuits.

"The G-77 is an incredibly diverse group," said Michael A. Levi, a climate change specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations who is attending the Copenhagen meeting. "Its richest countries are 50 times as wealthy on a per-capita basis as its poorest ones. All of this makes a common yet constructive position very difficult. The easiest thing to agree on is to obstruct action."

The cost of such obstruction is growing higher by the day. On Thursday and Friday, ministers and heads of government are expected to fashion a complex political agreement encompassing a host of issues that have divided them for years. Seldom, if ever, have national leaders engaged in negotiations as complex - and as poorly prepared - as these.

The strain is showing both inside the Bella Center and outside. On Wednesday, hundreds of demonstrators tried to storm the hall, but were pushed back by truncheon-wielding riot police officers who made 260 arrests. Inside, numerous groups staged demonstrations, sit-ins and noisy disruptions of public sessions.

Mr. de Boer, the United Nations official in charge of the conference, said that he was concerned about the safety of the arriving leaders and the rest of the participants. "The incidents that have taken place today inside the conference center test my courage to continue in this way," he said, suggesting he would sharply limit access to the hall for the final two days.

By John M. Broder and Tom Zeller Jr., The New York Times, December 17, 2009

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration on Monday laid out a human rights agenda that recognized the limits of American authority: emphasizing the need for change within countries, defending engagement with adversaries like Myanmar and Iran and asserting that differences with big countries like China and Russia are best hashed out behind closed doors.

"We must be pragmatic and agile in pursuit of our human rights agenda, not compromising on our principles, but doing what is most likely to make them real," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a wide-ranging address at Georgetown University.

Mrs. Clinton's remarks came a week after President Obama, in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, warned that there would be consequences for countries that brutalize their own people. Together, the speeches appeared to be an attempt to answer critics who say the Obama administration has not staked out a forceful position on human rights.

But while Mr. Obama's tone was soaring, Mrs. Clinton's was more earthbound. She offered a list of examples of how the United States could affect change in countries by working with democracy groups, multilateral organizations and socially responsible corporations.

Mrs. Clinton also defended the administration's reluctance to publicly chide China and Russia for human rights abuses, given the range of other strategic interests the United States has with both countries. Public opprobrium, she implied, was better left for small countries.

"Sometimes, we will have the most impact by publicly denouncing a government action, like the coup in Honduras or the violence in Guinea," she told a group of students. "Other times, we will be more likely to help the oppressed by engaging in tough negotiations behind closed doors, like pressing China and Russia as part of our broader agenda."

"In every instance," Mrs. Clinton said, "our aim will be to make a difference, not prove a point."

Human-rights groups harshly criticized Mrs Clinton for sidelining human rights issues on her first visit to China last February. Other critics have voiced frustration with the administration's policy toward Sudan, an approach that they say offers more incentives than prods to a government whose leader has been charged with crimes against humanity because of the genocide in Darfur.

Last Thursday, a group of human rights advocates met with Mr. Obama's national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, to express their concerns.

On Monday, Mrs. Clinton said, "We must continue to press for solutions in Sudan where ongoing tensions threaten to add to the devastation wrought by genocide in Darfur." She insisted that the administration would seek to protect ethnic minorities in Tibet and the Xinjiang region in China, as well as people who signed Charter 08, a manifesto that calls for democratic reform in China.

Mrs. Clinton's specific reference to the signatories of Charter 08 was worthy of praise, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

But he argued the administration was still wrong to believe that publicly airing concerns about human rights would somehow undermine the relationship between Washington and Beijing.

"The perception in China is that the United States is confronting the government less on human rights because we owe them money," Mr. Malinowski said in a telephone interview. "Every sign of reticence on human rights becomes a metaphor for American weakness."

Over all, however, he said he had detected promising signs in the administration's approach to human rights. After early wavering, for example, Mr. Obama struck a balance between supporting the human-rights goals of Iranian opposition figures while not appearing to side with any faction, he said.

There has been an evolution, Mr. Malinowski said, from seeking engagement to seeking engagement with the threat of pressure to back it up.

Critics point out that the State Department has cut funding for several nonprofit groups that track human-rights abuses in Iran, though others say these groups had little to do with advancing democracy there.

While Mrs. Clinton said the United States would press for democracy around the world, she linked it to development - avoiding the sometimes single-minded emphasis of the Bush administration on freedom.

In describing a policy of "principled pragmatism," Mrs. Clinton said the United States would approach situations flexibly, depending on the circumstances. She grouped countries into three categories: those that would like to protect human rights, but are unable to (young African democracies); those that could do better, but choose not to (Cuba and Nigeria); and those that are neither willing nor able to protect their citizens (Congo).

Mrs. Clinton showed a rare flash of passion in discussing the systematic rape of girls and young women in Congo, which she visited in August. She also singled out for criticism Uganda, which is considering a law that would make homosexual conduct a criminal offense.

In its low-key tone, Mrs. Clinton's speech was a stark contrast to the impassioned speech she gave as first lady at a United Nations women's conference in Beijing in 1995. But administration officials said Mrs. Clinton's goal was not rhetoric but a road map to follow Mr. Obama's big themes.

"The world still looks to the United States to be a force in human rights," said Michael H. Posner, an assistant secretary of state who oversees human rights. "But we are in a world where governments, as a whole, have less power than they once did. Let's take the world as we now see it."

By Mark Landler, The New York Times, December 14, 2009

Clinton daughter, Chelsea, engaged to longtime boyfriend, who is son of former lawmakers

Turns out those discredited rumors of a possible Chelsea Clinton wedding last summer were mostly just premature: The 29-year old daughter of former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has become engaged to her longtime boyfriend, 31-year old investment banker Marc Mezvinsky.

The couple sent an e-mail to friends Friday announcing the news, saying they were looking at a possible wedding next summer. Matt McKenna, a spokesman for the former president, confirmed the engagement Monday.

Mezvinsky is a son of former Pennsylvania Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky and former Iowa Rep. Ed Mezvinsky, longtime friends of the Clintons. Ed Mezvinsky was released from federal prison last year after serving a nearly five-year sentence for wire and bank fraud.

Margolies-Mezvinsky served just one term in Congress before losing her seat in 1994 after voting in favor of President Clinton's 1993 budget, which was controversial at the time.

At the State Department Monday, Hillary Clinton had one brief encounter with reporters but took no questions. Later, her spokesman, Ian C. Kelly, was asked about the reported engagement but said it would be inappropriate for him to comment.

"I have a daughter who's around, she's 22 years old. And the last thing I would want would be for the State Department spokesman to talk about the personal plans of my daughter, so I am going to decline any comment on that," Kelly said.

The former first daughter and her fiance became friends as teenagers in Washington and both attended Stanford University. They now live in New York, where Mezvinsky works at G3 Capital, a Manhattan hedge fund, and Clinton is pursuing a graduate degree at Columbia University's School of Public Health.

Before returning to graduate school, Clinton worked at Avenue Capital, a hedge fund run by prominent Democratic donor Marc Lasry. She also worked at McKinsey and Company, a management consulting firm.

Since her debut on the public stage as a curly haired 12-year-old during her father's 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton has maintained a fairly low public profile. That changed in 2008, when the press-shy Clinton stepped out on the campaign trail to help her mother's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Before beginning a relationship with Mezvinsky, Clinton dated Ian Klaus, a Rhodes Scholar she met while studying international relations at Oxford in 2002. Klaus dedicated his first book, "Elvis is Titanic," about his experience teaching in the Kurdistan province of Iraq, to Clinton.

Earlier this year, Hillary Clinton was forced to tamp down speculation that her daughter and Mezvinsky were already engaged and would marry in August on Martha's Vineyard. President Barack Obama, who was vacationing on the island at the time, was rumored to be on the guest list.

Aides to Hillary Clinton, citing Chelsea's privacy, declined to disclose whether she has received an engagement ring or any other details about wedding plans. It will be an interfaith marriage; Mezvinsky is Jewish, while Clinton grew up attending Methodist Church with her mother. Bill Clinton is Southern Baptist.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration on Wednesday welcomed Israel's decision to temporarily freeze new construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank as a step toward restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued an approving statement moments after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in Jerusalem the launching of a 10-month moratorium.

"Today's announcement by the government of Israel helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Clinton said. "We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements."

At the State Department, the administration's special envoy for Mideast peace, former Sen. George Mitchell, told a news conference that the Israeli decision could mark a step toward restarting peace talks.

"It falls short of a full settlement freeze, but it is more than any Israeli government has done before and can help movement toward agreement between the parties," Mitchell said.

"While they fall short of a full freeze, we believe the steps announced by the prime minister are significant and could have substantial impact on the ground," he added. "For the first time ever an Israeli government will stop housing approvals and all new construction of housing units and related infrastructure in West Bank settlements. That's a positive development."

"Nothing like this occurred during the Bush administration," he added later.

Mitchell said he would return to the Mideast "in the near future" to resume his efforts to win agreement from the Israelis and Palestinians to return to the negotiating table. He said that although the two sides have failed to resume bargaining, he has no intention of giving up his efforts to revive talks and remains confident that they eventually will succeed.

"As President Obama has said many times, we believe that a two-state solution to the conflict is the best way to realize the shared goal of Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security," Mitchell said. "It is also in the national security interest of the United States. It is urgently needed."

The Associated Press, November 25, 2009

Potential conflicts of interest are issue for couple, critics say

Since becoming secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton has gone to great lengths to avoid any appearance of undue influence from her husband. Bill Clinton rarely visits the State Department; he never joins his wife's far-flung official trips. With his headquarters in New York and hers in Washington, they live mostly apart.

In August when a student in Congo asked Clinton about her husband's views, she snapped that he "is not the secretary of state" and that she was "not going to be channeling my husband."

Yet the real story is more complicated because, 10 months into her tenure, it is clear that their worlds and their interests cannot avoid intersecting. Hillary Clinton has put problems such as Northern Ireland, Haiti and Third World development near the top of the agenda at the State Department, and they are also part of the former president's charitable mission. Bill Clinton secretly helped push the administration's -- and his wife's -- agenda with North Korea on a trip officially called a humanitarian mission.

For a select group of issues, the combined energies of the Clintons can be potent. Just days after Hillary Clinton appointed Declan Kelly the economic envoy to Northern Ireland, for instance, he turned to her husband for help.

Bill Clinton agreed to include a session on Northern Ireland at his annual philanthropic mega-event, which coincides with the U.N. General Assembly in September. Hundreds of business executives packed a ballroom to hear Clinton and Kelly make their investment pitch. The gathering was, Kelly told the crowd, "a massive assistance to me in my role." After the session, dozens of executives lined up to talk to Kelly, according to one official in attendance.

'A very tricky area'

The Clintons declined requests for interviews, but their aides emphasize that Secretary Clinton is carrying out the Obama administration's foreign policy and say that their shared priorities are a coincidence. Some lawmakers, however, are wary of potential conflicts. Bill Clinton's charitable foundation has received large contributions in recent years from governments such as Saudi Arabia's, as well as Indian tycoons and prominent supporters of Israel -- presenting what Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) called a "multimillion-dollar minefield of conflicts of interest." In response, the former president agreed to release the foundation's donor list and allow ethics officials to review some foreign pledges; the first annual disclosure of contributions since Hillary Clinton was confirmed is weeks away.

"They need to walk a very careful line; it's a very tricky area. Hopefully that is being heeded, in terms of fundraising, by the Clinton Foundation," said Andy Fisher, a spokesman for Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee.

While the Clintons lead separate professional lives, they deal with some of the same leaders and issues. The William J. Clinton Foundation works in more than 40 countries on health, climate change and economic development, often collaborating with governments. The annual Clinton philanthropic powwow drew 33 presidents and prime ministers -- from Colombia to Kenya to Turkey.

Mindful of concerns about impropriety, and eager to be judged on her own merits, Hillary Clinton has played down her husband's influence.

Pressed whether she and her husband discussed North Korean leader Kim Jong Il or other foreign issues, Clinton told a Thai interviewer in July: "Sometimes we do, because I really value his advice. But he's so busy in his charitable activities right now that there's no real connection between what he's doing and my official capacity."

Friends say the Clintons talk and e-mail frequently and have always been deeply interested in each other's opinions and ideas. "A lot of the overlap in their interests and work you might see now are probably an outgrowth of having worked together on those issues when they were in the White House," said Doug Hattaway, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

That is true of Northern Ireland, where Bill Clinton helped broker the 1998 peace accords. The couple also has a long-standing interest in Haiti. They visited the poverty-stricken country as newlyweds in 1975, and their involvement intensified with the 1994 U.S. military intervention Bill Clinton ordered to dislodge a junta.

Hillary Clinton has assigned the Haiti portfolio to her chief of staff and plugged the country at an international donors' conference -- where her husband also spoke -- in April. His foundation has supported development projects in Haiti and steered more than $100 million in aid from other groups there.

When Bill Clinton was named a U.N. envoy there in June, he agreed not to lobby the State Department for money for Haiti. "But since the secretary of state has been going to Haiti as long as I have, I would presume that I don't need to say much," he said.

Haitian Ambassador Raymond Alcide Joseph said the Clinton double-whammy is powerful. "I think Haiti is just more than lucky at this time to have this great couple in various capacities poring over it and looking at it, helping it," he said.

'He's been so careful'

Friends say Bill Clinton has been eager to avoid saying or doing anything that could cause problems for his wife and has given up some speaking opportunities. "So far, it's worked because he's been so careful," said one longtime friend, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Clinton was particularly cautious about the one diplomatic mission he has carried out for the administration: winning the release of two American journalists jailed in North Korea. The former president has portrayed his August trip as a humanitarian mission, made at the request of North Korea's leader.

But, with no publicity, he tried to boost his wife's diplomatic efforts, according to John D. Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress, who accompanied Clinton.

Podesta told "The Charlie Rose Show" that the delegation urged the North Koreans to return to six-nation disarmament talks and to free detained South Korean businessmen and fishermen. North Korea has released them and plans to meet next month with a U.S. envoy to discuss rejoining the nuclear talks.

If Bill Clinton has influenced his wife's foreign policy interests, she also has guided his, friends say. The recent Clinton Global Initiative charitable event featured programs on international women's issues, a longtime cause of Hillary Clinton's. She used that meeting to present the administration's multibillion-dollar plan to help Third World farmers, an area where her husband is also active. And she praised Bill Clinton's efforts to link government, business and philanthropic groups.

"I have to acknowledge that much of what we are attempting to do is derived from what I have seen happen here," Hillary Clinton said.

By Mary Beth Sheridan, The Washington Post, November 26, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is holding out the possibility that Iraq's national election could be delayed beyond January because of a dispute over the allocation of seats in parliament.

Clinton told reporters at the State Department Monday that U.S. officials are involved in trying to help Iraqi politicians sort out their differences over an elections law that must pass before the vote can be held.

The election is supposed to be conducted in January. Clinton mentioned no specific dates but said the election "might slip" as a result of the continuing dispute over the elections law. She expressed confidence that the voting eventually will be held.

The Associated Press, November 23, 2009

WASHINGTON - When Hillary Rodham Clinton heard that an 8-year-old Saudi girl had been sold to a man in his 50s to pay off her father's debt, the U.S. secretary of state telephoned the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, to protest.

Mrs. Clinton's call - on the type of issue usually handled by an aide - symbolized her fervor for making women's advancement a core part of her national-security efforts, even in dealing with problems such as Iran's suspected nuclear threat or the Islamist violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"Women are key to our being able to resolve all of those difficult conflicts," Mrs. Clinton said in a speech in August. Since then, she has pursued initiatives to help women gain political power, personal safety and enough money to help their communities and countries improve economically and transition to democracy.

"There is nothing that has been more important to me over the course of my lifetime than advancing the rights of women and girls," she said in a Washington speech Nov. 6. "And it is now a cornerstone of American foreign policy."

Mrs. Clinton, 62, has been pushing the cause from remote Congolese villages to the U.N. General Assembly. She appointed Melanne Verveer, 65, her former chief of staff, as the first U.S. ambassador for global women's issues. On every foreign trip, Mrs. Clinton schedules an event with local women.

She visited a Cape Town community built by homeless women and consoled rape victims in the war-racked eastern Congo during an August tour of Africa. Her brow furrowed as she asked a volunteer at a refugee camp why women were venturing alone into a nearby forest to gather firewood, exposing them to attacks from militiamen.

While Mrs. Clinton is America's third female secretary of state, the political profile of women is still low: Only 18.6 percent of Parliament members globally are women, according to the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union. Women perform 66 percent of the world's work and produce 50 percent of the food, while earning 10 percent of the income and owning 1 percent of the property, data from the United Nations Development Fund for Women show.

A new focus inside the State Department is financial inclusion: ensuring that women have access to savings accounts, health insurance, home ownership and business funding.

Women already get the majority of small loans made by more than 1,400 institutions worldwide tracked by MIX Market, a microfinance databank in Washington. SKS Microfinance Private, India's largest microlender, has five million borrowers - all women. Profits soared to $17.5 million in 2008 from $71,121 in 2004.

President George W. Bush and his wife Laura, who worked to expand opportunities in Afghanistan, recognized the national-security value of improving women's lives.

Karen Hughes, a close Bush aide, focused on the issue as an under secretary of state, a job that convinced her that "it is increasingly the women of the world who are the agents of change, the arbiters of peace and reconciliation," she said in an e-mail.

A strategy to combat radicalism in part by empowering women has limits, says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University in Washington. While it may bear fruit against Al Qaeda or the Taliban, groups such as Hamas or Hezbollah in the Middle East "have highly motivated women fighters who are treated well and hate us, even if we are a secondary enemy," he wrote in an e-mail.

By elevating the plight of women so publicly, Mrs. Clinton has breathed new life into women's issues on Capitol Hill. Senator John Kerry and Representative William Delahunt, Massachusetts Democrats, are expected soon to introduce legislation to make permanent the ambassadorship Ms. Verveer now holds.

Their measure would also direct the administration to create a five-year strategy that reduces assaults against women and girls in at least 10 nations and creates ways to judge the effectiveness of U.S. aid in advancing the goal.

The administration's willingness to consider women's issues when making policy is being tested in Afghanistan. American fatigue with fatalities there is growing, and women have much to lose with a return to Taliban rule, which would mean a reimposition of restrictions on almost all aspects of their lives.

Nita Lowey, a Democratic representative from New York who chairs a House Appropriations subcommittee, told President Hamid Karzai in May she would stop civilian aid unless he quashed a proposed law legalizing marital rape. Some of the bill's most offensive provisions were removed. Similarly, after Mrs. Clinton's intervention in April, the Saudi girl was allowed to divorce.

Internationally, women want to leverage Mrs. Clinton's enthusiasm to win U.S. ratification of the 30-year-old Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Conservatives on Capitol Hill have long objected to the treaty because it affirms a woman's right to reproductive choice.

The United States is one of only a handful of countries that have not ratified the treaty, along with Somalia, Sudan and Iran. Mrs. Clinton's aides say it is on her "treaty priority list."

U.S. approval would prevent countries from using America's lack of participation as a reason for not enforcing the agreement, said Mahnaz Afkhami, a former Iranian Parliament member and treaty advocate.

"I've never seen such awareness" in Washington, she says. "There is all sorts of hope that maybe this degree of seriousness will bear fruit."

By JANINE ZACHARIA, Bloomberg, November 24, 2009