PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed Saturday the United States stood ready to help the quake-stricken nation of Haiti "today, tomorrow and for the time ahead."

"We are here at the invitation of your government to help you," Clinton told a press conference after meeting Haiti's President Rene Preval at the base set up for the massive relief operations in the Haitian capital.

"As President (Barack) Obama has said we will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead," she pledged.

The top US diplomat said she and Preval would be issuing a statement on Sunday "setting forth our intention to work together."

She told Haitians: "You have been severely tested, but I believe that Haiti can come back even stronger and better in the future."

Officials estimate 50,000 people were killed and 1.5 million left homeless in the 7.0-magnitude quake which rocked the impoverished Caribbean nation on Tuesday.

AFP, January 16, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton assured Haiti's quake-ravaged people on Saturday the United States would work with their government to ensure the country emerged "stronger and better" after this week's disaster.

"We will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead," Clinton told a news conference at Port-au-Prince airport, saying she wanted to speak directly to the Haitian people after a meeting with Haitian President Rene Preval.

"You have been severely tested. But I believe that Haiti can come back even stronger and better in the future," she said.

Preval expressed gratitude for the huge relief effort that has unfolded after Tuesday's earthquake, which killed tens of thousands of people and devastated Haiti's ramshackle capital.

"Mrs. Clinton's visit really warms our heart today," Preval said through an interpreter, adding that it would help to establish the priorities and coordination necessary to keep the relief work running.

Clinton underscored that the U.S. aid drive -- involving thousands of soldiers, sailors and Marines along with civilian aid workers -- was at the invitation of Haiti's government and said she and Preval would issue a joint communique on Sunday outlining the way forward.

As the sound of aircraft bearing relief supplies momentarily drowned out the microphone, Clinton was upbeat.

"That's a good sound," Clinton said. "That means good things are coming and helping the people of Haiti," she said.

ONE-DAY TRIP

Clinton's quick one-day trip was designed to avoid complicating the relief effort, with hundreds of thousands of Haitians still desperately waiting for assistance as scavengers and looters take advantage of the widespread absence of authority and order.

Clinton first flew to the Coast Guard Air Station Borinquen in Puerto Rico, where she transferred to a Coast Guard C-130 transport plane carrying emergency food and water rations along with toothbrushes, doughnuts, underwear and other supplies for U.S. embassy personnel.

She left aboard another huge relief plane with 50 U.S. evacuees aboard headed for Kingston, Jamaica. Twenty-two of the Americans were due to continue on with Clinton to the Washington area.

Clinton said the relief drive was aimed at immediate needs such as water, food and medical help along with rescue work for people still trapped in the rubble.

She said she and Preval also discussed the future, which U.S. officials say could involve a major international effort to improve conditions in Haiti, which remains the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

Before her arrival, Clinton told reporters traveling with her that the Haitian government, itself battling to recover from the quake, had given the U.S. government leeway to meet emergency needs.

But she said that could be further expedited if the Haitian parliament passed a decree granting Preval's government more emergency powers -- some of which could be delegated to the United States -- such as imposing a curfew.

She said the United States would continue to work with both the Haitian government and the United Nations, which has about 7,000 peacekeepers on the island and primary responsibility for security.

"We are working to back them up, but not to supplant them," she said.

The United Nations announced on Saturday that the chief of its mission in Haiti had also perished in the earthquake, along with his deputy.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met Saturday with Haitian President Rene Preval and promised that U.S. quake relief efforts would be closely coordinated with local officials.

Clinton's remarks appeared designed to counter any notion of a too-intrusive American involvement in the aftermath of the quake, while also assuring Haitians the humanitarian mission would continue as long as it's needed.

"We are here at the invitation of your government to help you," she said at a news conference at the Port-au-Prince airport. "As President Obama has said, we will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead. And speaking personally, I know of the great resilience and strength of the Haitian people. You have been severely tested. But I believe that Haiti can come back even stronger and better in the future."

Clinton, the highest-ranking Obama administration official to visit since the magnitude-7.0 quake struck Tuesday, arrived in a Coast Guard C-130 transport that carried bottled water, packaged food, soap and other supplies. She was accompanied by Rajiv Shah, the U.S. Agency for International Development administrator who is acting as the top U.S. relief coordinator.

Clinton also met with U.N. officials and U.S. civilians and military personnel working on the relief effort. She said she and Preval discussed his government's priorities: restoring communications, electricity and transportation.

"And we agreed that we will be coordinating closely together to achieve these goals," she said, adding that she and Preval would issue a communique on Sunday outlining cooperation between the two countries.

Preval said he was encouraged to see former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush together with President Barack Obama at the White House earlier Saturday in a joint plea for international assistance to Haiti.

He noted that U.S. aid has already arrived, and he told reporters he met a survivor who was pulled from the rubble Saturday and receiving care from American medical teams. He thanked Clinton for her visit and for Obama's continued support of Haiti.

"Mrs. Clinton's visit really warms our heart today," he said.

During the news conference, officials noted the clatter of military helicopters landing and taking off nearby.

"That's a good sound," Clinton said. "That means that good things are going to the people of Haiti."

"We look to our Japanese allies and friends to follow through on their commitments," Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference with Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada. Three times, she indicated that the Obama administration was not open to any compromise.

Mrs. Clinton also said it was premature to comment on China's announcement late Monday that it had successfully tested its first land-based missile defense system - a move analysts said was intended to signal Beijing's pique at the administration's decision to sell weapons to Taiwan.

She said the United States had expected the test and played down speculation that it was a rebuke for American actions, like the sale of missile defense equipment to Taiwan.

"I do not think it is connected to any other action or event," Mrs. Clinton said. "We have followed the Chinese development of aerospace capacity for quite some time, and this had been foreshadowed some weeks ago."

Chinese officials have condemned the sale of missiles to Taiwan, which they view as a renegade province. Obama administration officials say they are merely fulfilling a deal negotiated by the Bush administration.

Relations between China and the United States have been further complicated by Beijing's reluctance to impose sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program and by differences over climate policy, which were accentuated at the tumultuous Copenhagen climate meeting last month.

"There are obviously, with any two nations as with any two people, differences of opinion," Mrs. Clinton said.

Next week is the 50th anniversary of the security treaty between Japan and the United States, and Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Okada both proclaimed the alliance strong. But the milestone has been marred by the standoff over Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, on Okinawa.

In 2006, Japan and United States agreed to move the base to a less populated part of the island. Japan's new coalition government, however, has refused to carry out the shift. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama campaigned for moving the base off Okinawa or even out of Japan altogether.

The Japanese government, Mr. Okada said, will propose a site for the base in May, after talks with junior parties in the coalition, which are even more stridently opposed to the agreement.

Noting that the government was studying alternative sites, Mr. Okada said, "We will come up with a solution so there will be minimum impact on the U.S.-Japan alliance."

Mrs. Clinton said she was sympathetic to political sensitivities in Japan, but she left little doubt that American patience was wearing thin. "It is important to move on Futenma," she said. Other American officials said they expected the Japanese to cobble together a compromise.

Later Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton delivered a speech on American security strategy in Asia.

Noting that Honolulu is President Obama's hometown and that he spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, Mrs. Clinton said the administration was determined to deepen America's engagement in the region.

"America's future is linked to the future of this region, and the future of this region depends on America," she said. She called for strengthening the alphabet soup of regional security and economic organizations. In a show of commitment, she said she was headed to Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, far-flung places to which an American secretary of state rarely goes.

Of course, that also allows her to escape the chatter in Washington generated by a new book on the 2008 presidential campaign, "Game Change," in which the authors report unflattering details about her and her husband.

Asked whether she wanted to comment on one such detail - that she had lamented the election matchup of Mr. Obama and John McCain, saying it was a "terrible choice" for the American people - Mrs. Clinton smiled and slowly shook her head.

"But I have a lot to say about Asia," she said.

Mrs. Clinton, speaking to reporters Monday on her plane, said the United States and China had a "mature relationship," which she said meant that "it doesn't go off the rails when we have differences of opinion."

"We will provide defensive arms for Taiwan," Mrs. Clinton said. "We have a difference of perspective on the role and ambitions of the Dalai Lama, which we've been very public about."

Mrs. Clinton was traveling to Hawaii, her first stop in a nine-day trip that will include Papua New Guines, New Zealand and Australia. In Honolulu, she is scheduled to give a speech on United States security strategy in Asia, and to meet the Japanese foreign minister, Katsuya Okada.

Japan has frustrated and angered the Obama administration with its refusal to carry out a 2006 agreement to move a Marine Corps air station in Okinawa to a less populated area of the island.

Mrs. Clinton sought to play down the dispute, saying the alliance was "much bigger than any one particular issue."

Japanese-American relations have been unsettled since August, when voters in Japan swept out the long-entrenched Liberal Democratic Party in favor of the slightly left-leaning Democratic Party, led by Yukio Hatoyama. Mr. Hatoyama spoke of forging closer ties to Asian neighbors like China, prompting concerns in Washington that Japan was pulling away from its close relations with the United States.

President Obama tried to reduce tensions when he visited Tokyo in November. But after he left, Mr. Okada pushed for a government inquiry into secret agreements with the United States in the 1960s and 1970s that allowed American aircraft and ships with nuclear weapons to enter Japan.

Most of the tension is rooted in the dispute over Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. The Obama administration wants Japan to honor a 2006 agreement to move the base to a less populated part of Okinawa. But Mr. Hatoyama campaigned to move it off the island or even out of Japan.

Mrs. Clinton said the bumps were aftershocks from Japan's political earthquake. "You can imagine what it would be like in our own country, if after 50 years a party that had never held power, actually held it," she said.

In her first visit to Beijing as secretary of state last February, Mrs. Clinton played down human rights concerns and emphasized cooperation on issues like trade and climate change. But on Monday, she took a tougher line, saying that Washington was a necessary counterweight to Beijing.

"People want to see the United States fully engaged in Asia, so that as China rises, there's the presence of the United States as a force for peace and stability, as a guarantor of security," Mrs. Clinton said.

She also called on China to use its influence to force North Korea back into negotiations on relinquishing its nuclear weapons. North Korea said Monday that it would not return to those talks unless sanctions against it were lifted, and it was able to negotiate a formal peace treaty with the United States to replace the 1953 truce that ended the Korean War.

Returning to those multiparty talks, she said, was a precondition for dealing with other issues.

Starting her second year as the nation's chief diplomat, Mrs. Clinton spoke more about pressure than diplomatic engagement.

Speaking of Iran, she said the United States and its allies were discussing financial sanctions that would appear to be aimed at the Revolutionary Guards and other political players in the country, should diplomacy fail.

"It is clear that there is a relatively small group of decision makers inside Iran," she said. "They are in both political and commercial relationships, and if we can create a sanctions track that targets those who actually make the decisions, we think that is a smarter way to do sanctions."

But she added, "All that is yet to be decided upon."

The world is looking to Mr. Obama to wrest some credible success from this process. And on Thursday, with almost 120 heads of state and government in attendance, there were some signs that a meaningful political deal might be at hand, including a slight shift in China's position and a pledge by the United States to help the poorest nations cope financially with global warming.

But top negotiators here said that the talks could also prove a humiliating failure, because China and the United States, the world's two largest emitters, remain deeply divided over a number of difficult problems.

Mr. Obama is putting a measure of his and the nation's prestige on the line by entering a debate with so much still unresolved. It was only 11 weeks ago that he left this same city empty-handed after pleading for Chicago to be selected as the site of the 2016 Olympics.

But the maneuvering and brinksmanship that have characterized the final week of the talks are also a sign of their seriousness; never before have global leaders come so close to a meaningful agreement to reduce the greenhouse gases linked to warming the planet.

The administration provided the talks with a palpable boost on Thursday when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared that the United States would contribute its share of $100 billion a year in long-term financing to help poor nations adapt to climate change.

The administration had remained silent for months as other major economic powers came forward with similar or even more generous financial proposals.

A senior Obama administration official said the announcement was carefully timed to resuscitate the talks before Mr. Obama's arrival.

"It's a negotiation," he explained.

But Mrs. Clinton' offer came with two significant conditions. First, the 192 nations involved in the talks here must reach a comprehensive political agreement that takes effect immediately. Second, and more critically, all nations must agree to some form of verification - she repeatedly used the term "transparency" - to ensure they are meeting their environmental promises.

China, the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, has brought the talks to a virtual standstill all week over this issue, which its leaders claim to be an affront to national sovereignty.

But the Chinese balkiness on the issue is matched in large measure by Mr. Obama's own constraints. The Senate has not yet acted on a climate bill that the president needs to make good on his promises of emissions reductions and on the financial support that he has now promised the rest of the world.

"The president and his team have been doing everything possible to create a deal that is fair to the U.S. and facilitates international agreement," said Paul Bledsoe of the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan advisory group. "But if the Chinese will not accept monitoring of emissions, then a deal is not worth doing."

China appeared to crack the door a bit toward a system of reporting its emissions and its actions to reduce them on Thursday. He Yafei, the vice foreign minister, repeated China's opposition to any intrusive international monitoring regime in a news conference on Thursday. But he said his country would consider voluntary "international exchanges" of information on its climate programs.

Administration officials here were not ready to publicly declare any breakthroughs in their talks with China and other nations on verification measures.

"We're making progress on all the outstanding issues with the Chinese," a senior administration official said in a conference call with reporters. "But it's still a very challenging task. It's impossible to anticipate where this will end."

Detailed talks were still continuing Thursday afternoon among at least 16 different subgroups on a range of issues, including finance for developing countries and mechanisms to preserve forests - even on whether to keep the Kyoto Protocol or commit to rolling that treaty into a new agreement.

A contingent of Democratic leaders in Congress flew in Thursday to highlight support for the administration's position at the summit meeting. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a number of House committee chairmen declared that the climate change bill they passed in June would provide a large share of the money needed to redeem the administration's promises. They met privately with a number of delegations to urge them to encourage China and a number of other nations in the so-called Group of 77 developing countries to drop their objections to the proposed agreement.

"I believe the leaders appreciate the magnitude of the challenge they're facing and will come to an agreement by the end of the week," said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts. "And the $100 billion really does help with the concerns of the G-77. And now we're left with China."

Republicans mounted a counteroffensive. Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma and Congress's most vocal climate change skeptic, showed up in the press area of the Bella Center early on Thursday to deliver what he called a reality check to the proceedings here.

"There is going to be no cap and trade or binding legislation in the United States," he said. "It's dead. It's not going to happen."

Somewhat more substantively, in Washington, a group of House Republicans said they planned to introduce a resolution formally disapproving of the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that greenhouse gases endangered public health and safety, a step that could lead to economy-wide regulation of such emissions.

The Republicans said the finding would lead to job losses and take money out of the pockets of consumers "so that radical environmentalists can wage a war against nature."

The resolution, if it passes, will not have the force of law.

The $100 billion figure proposed by Mrs. Clinton is similar to estimates by the European Union of the needed contribution, although the amount is below the $150 billion or so that experts at the European Union have pushed for.

Mrs. Clinton said the money would be a mix of public and private funds, including "alternative sources of finance," but declined to explain what that might mean. 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 contain billions of dollars to slow deforestation, which contributes to concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Some delegates and observers said that Mrs. Clinton's announcement might weaken the solidarity of the G-77 developing countries with China.

Apparently attempting to appeal to these divisions, the United States Congressional delegation immediately went into a meeting with Indian officials, focusing on verification of emissions reductions programs, Ms. Pelosi said.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, meanwhile, appeared focused on consolidating China's G-77 ties, meeting with representatives of Brazil, Bangladesh, Trinidad, Ethiopia and Sudan since his arrival on Wednesday night.

The head of Brazil's delegation, Dilma Rousseff, said her country, too, objected to "intrusive verification," and felt strongly that the Kyoto track should be maintained, for now anyway.

"No one is going to give up a bird in the hand for a bird that hasn't been introduced to us yet," she said.

Fander Falconi, Ecuador's foreign minister, was skeptical of the American financial offer.

"What we really need are firm mechanisms to reduce emissions from industrialized countries," he said. "Financial mechanisms are useful, but not central, not a solution."

"In the absence of an operational agreement that meets the requirements that I outlined, there will not be that financial agreement, at least from the United States," Clinton warned. And, she added: "Without that accord, there won't be the kind of joint global action from all of the major economies we all want to see, and the effects in the developing world could be catastrophic."

The pledged amount is less than what the European Union had laid out as necessary to help the poorest countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America prepare for climate disasters and develop low-fossil-fuel economies. Clinton said the funding would come from a mix of public and private financing, including revenue raised from the auctioning of emission allowances under a possible U.S. cap-and-trade system still under development on Capitol Hill.

Clinton did not go into many other details, leaving it unclear precisely what the U.S. share of the $100 billion would be. U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said he is "looking keenly forward" to learning what that contribution will be.

De Boer and others said Clinton's announcement has helped get the lurching and sputtering train of international climate talks back on track.

After a long stall, some movement

"Hold tight and mind the doors. The cable car is moving again," a smiling de Boer said moments after Clinton's announcement.

Added Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, "There's a feeling among negotiators that now we have to go into business, and now we have to be flexible, and now we have to try as hard as we can to make real compromises."

U.S. environmental groups and House Democrats heaped praise on the announcement, while Republican staffers warned of the political difficulties back home in selling such a vast contribution as the economy reels.

"I think it's very essential to the success of how we go forward," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told E&E as she arrived at the Bella Center. "We'll see what the participation will be of other nations, what's certainly appropriate for us to play a leading role in it. So I salute her."

Pelosi is in Copenhagen with 20 other House members, including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Joe Barton (R-Texas).

Oxfam, which has been among the groups on the front lines pressing for adaptation funding, said it was "heartened" by the proposed fund. But the group pressed for money to come from public sources in industrialized countries, and insisted on assurances that the money be in addition to existing financial aid.

"Private financing is no substitute for public investment in the resilience of the poorest and most vulnerable communities," said Oxfam climate change director David Waskow.

Clinton did not specify from what exact sources the money would be broken down, where it would go or how it would get there. She made a point of emphasizing that the money would go to "the poorest and most vulnerable among us." That underscores comments State Department climate envoy Todd Stern has made that China in particular would not be eligible for climate finance. Moreover, the United States has pushed for major developing countries like China to be contributors to any international climate fund.

Pressure on China to respond

"This is the type of high-level political offer that we've been looking for world leaders to bring to Copenhagen to reach a global deal," he said.

International reaction was cautiously optimistic. "I think that we need yet to know what about China?" said Portuguese environmental minister Dulce Pássaro. "With this improvement of the United States, I think we are waiting for China's position."

Yang said she believes there is a compromise to be had between the United States and China on transparency, America's No. 1 issue.

"China doesn't want to give the impression that the negotiations are just about China and the U.S.," she said. "I don't think they want to make it look like a China-U.S. battle here. Obviously, there are a lot of other players here."

Maria de Fatima Monteiro Jardim, environment minister of Angola, noted that African countries suffer dire poverty. Angola in south-central Africa, for example, suffers some of the lowest life expectancy and highest infant mortality rates in the world.

"The rich countries could give more, it's my opinion," Jardin said. "More, more, more, more." Looking ahead to 2010, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said he hoped the annual U.N. conference next November in Mexico City was only to deal with implementation issues following success in Copenhagen.

"Let's seize this opportunity," Calderon said about an hour before Clinton's press conference. "Mexico awaits you with open arms."

Luminaries already are trickling in. By late afternoon, both Britain's Prince Charles and U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon had arrived for welcoming ceremonies.

In the back rooms of the Bella Center, where negotiators are frantically trying to come to agreement on major issues before more than 117 presidents and prime ministers start to arrive tomorrow, delegates privately said the outlook for success was grim. Publicly, they insisted upon optimism -- though they warned that the clock is ticking.

"We do only have 48 hours," said Connie Hedegaard, the Danish president of the conference, who fittingly once hosted a television news program called "Deadline." Before heads of state arrive, she said, "we must have finished the overall obstacles. That's the reality."

Yet the obstacles appeared to grow, not diminish, today. In a major show of force, top officials from China, India, Brazil and South Africa announced that they will collectively reduce global warming emissions 2.1 gigatons by 2020, but they will do it voluntarily. Meanwhile, they insisted that industrialized countries ramp up their targets significantly and sign an agreement that preserves the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, currently the only legally binding climate change agreement.

"Developing countries are taking their actions, and we are calling for developed countries to take their historical responsibilities squarely," said Xie Zhenhua, China's top climate envoy. "We demand developed countries cut emissions seriously."

Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, said the four major emerging countries -- which also are among the world's top greenhouse gas-emitting nations -- are united.

"We are coordinating our positions almost on an hourly basis," Ramesh said. "We will resist in a united manner any manipulation or any attempt to hijack the mandate of Copenhagen."

Both China and India have agreed to cut carbon emissions relative to economic growth in the coming decade. Brazil has announced major emission cuts tied largely to avoiding deforestation, and South Africa has pledged to peak emissions between 2020 and 2025. The group did not announce new targets today but made a powerful combined statement of its members' intentions to, as a representative from South Africa said, "take our responsibilities seriously."

Yet the refusal to be bound to those targets in an international agreement is a major problem for industrialized countries and the United States in particular.

Clinton's role

In an op-ed published today in the International Herald Tribune, Clinton stressed that international verification is key.

"A successful agreement depends upon a number of core elements, but two are shaping up to be essential: first, that all major economies set forth strong national actions and resolve to implement them; and second, that they agree to a system that enables full transparency and creates confidence that national actions are in fact being implemented," Clinton wrote.

Clinton also stressed a critical component to the climate accord sought by key moderate Senate Democrats and Republicans in Washington. "Transparency, in particular, is what will ensure that this agreement becomes operational, not just aspirational," she added. "We all need to take our share of responsibility, stand behind our commitments, and mean what we say in order for an international agreement to be credible."

Clinton's role is also increasingly growing in the closing hours before a critical deadline for the high-level environmental ministers who are trying to get as much accomplished as possible before their bosses arrive.

Obama calls Bangladesh, Ethiopia

Meanwhile, the poorest and most vulnerable countries received assurances from Obama that the White House wants to see a strong agreement reached.

The White House said Obama called Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and "emphasized his desire to reach a pragmatic solution that encompasses action by all countries" in Copenhagen.

In the phone calls, Obama recited U.S. efforts to curb emissions and talked about the different roles both countries are playing in the two-week-long negotiation session.

Hasina, in return, highlighted how 80 percent of Bangladesh's 150 million people will be especially affected by global warming. And Meles, whose country has a critical role in the African Union, underscored the need for the Copenhagen talks to "make suitable progress" on emission cuts, adaptation and financing to help the world's poorest countries cope with climate change.

'A lot of positioning'

As of press time, negotiators remained squirreled away in closed-door talks on a number of critical fronts, from long-term emission reduction plans to how to finance developing nation efforts. Draft proposals have been circulating in the Bella Center, too, but they all remain very tentative and filled with the ubiquitous brackets that mean multiple proposals are still on the table.

"Time is running away," said Sweden's environment minister, Andreas Carlgren. "Within 48 hours, or less than 48 hours, actually, we're going to finalize this agreement."

U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said the U.N. talks have reached a "very distinct and important moment" that will need to be resolved by the world leaders.

"There's a saying in English, 'You can lead the horse to water, but you can't make it drink,'" de Boer said, noting that the Danish conference's hosts have been working for two years "bringing 192 horses to water. But you can't, at the end of the day, make the horse drink. Now it is the job of world leaders to make sure we get a result here."

The U.N. talks have broken down several times already over the last nine days of the conference, most recently yesterday, when African nations blocked the entire process because they were not in the room for critical parts of the negotiations.

But Hedegaard downplayed the delays. "There's a lot of signaling out there, a lot of positioning, and that's not necessarily reflecting the spirit when the doors are closed," she said.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that human rights and democracy promotion are central to U.S. foreign policy, in a major speech after months of criticism that the Obama administration was being too timid about denouncing abuses of basic freedoms abroad.

Clinton emphasized that the U.S. government could demand other countries observe human rights only if it got its own house in order, a reference to President Obama's moves to end torture and close the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center.

She also put new focus on expanding the human rights discussion to include freedom from hunger and disease, an approach often emphasized by Third World countries.

But perhaps the most notable aspect of Clinton's speech was that she gave it at all, said activists and other experts on human rights. Her talk, and one last week by Obama at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, appeared to respond to concerns that the administration has not been forceful enough about abuses in places such as China.

"I think she went a long way in addressing what had become a kind of an issue that started to dog the Obama administration -- where do human rights and democracy fit with them?" said Sarah Mendelson, director of the human rights and security initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In her speech at Georgetown University, Clinton outlined several elements of the administration's approach. First, she said, every country would be held accountable for hewing to universal human rights standards -- "including ourselves."

Second, Clinton said, the administration would be pragmatic. She cited, for example, the decision to begin "measured engagement" with Burma after determining that isolating the regime was not helping.

Clinton was assailed early in the administration for appearing to play down human rights problems in China and the Middle East. On a recent trip to Russia, however, she denounced attacks on human rights promoters in a local radio interview and at a reception with pro-democracy activists and journalists.

David J. Kramer, an assistant secretary of state for human rights and democracy during the Bush administration, praised Clinton's speech for reflecting a bipartisan tradition of support for democracy and freedom.

He noted that Obama administration officials were initially reluctant to adopt some of the Bush administration's emphasis on promoting "freedom" and "ending tyranny." Critics had said Bush undermined that effort by inconsistently applying the ideas, especially in the Middle East.

"They wanted to distance themselves from it. But I think they made a mistake," Kramer said.

Carroll Bogert, associate director at Human Rights Watch, said Clinton's speech differed from Bush administration policy in its emphasis on accountability for the United States as well as for foreign countries.

Although human rights activists are pleased with Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, they are upset that some detainees there may be held indefinitely without trial in the United States. The administration may deem detainees too dangerous to release, but also may lack enough evidence to produce in court to convict them.

"Guantanamo is not a place; it's an idea," Bogert said. "They're still going to detain people without charge."

Clinton emphasized that her speech was not a "checklist" on how countries are doing on human rights. But she did single out some cases. She denounced the prosecution of signatories to Charter 08, a pro-democracy document in China.

And she noted the harassment of an elderly Chinese doctor, Gao Yaojie, for speaking out about AIDS in China.

"She should instead be applauded by her government for helping to confront the crisis," Clinton said.

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 Univeristy.

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 sidelinging 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."

Our world is on an unsustainable path that threatens not only our environment, but our economies and our security. It is time to launch a broad operational accord on climate change that will set us on a new course.

A successful agreement depends upon a number of core elements, but two are shaping up to be essential: first, that all major economies set forth strong national actions and resolve to implement them; and second, that they agree to a system that enables full transparency and creates confidence that national actions are in fact being implemented.

Transparency, in particular, is what will ensure that this agreement becomes operational, not just aspirational. We all need to take our share of responsibility, stand behind our commitments, and mean what we say in order for an international agreement to be credible.

Representatives from more than 190 countries have gathered in Copenhagen in the hopes of meeting this urgent challenge to our planet. If we are serious about that goal, we will all embrace these principles.

It is no secret that the United States turned a blind eye to climate change for too long. But now, under President Obama's leadership, we are taking responsibility and taking action.

Already, the Obama administration has done more at home to promote clean energy and address climate change than ever before in our history. We are investing more than $80 billion in clean energy and working with Congress to advance comprehensive climate and energy legislation. And we have announced our intention to cut our emissions in the range of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and ultimately in line with final climate and energy legislation.

In light of the president's goals, the expected pathway in pending legislation would extend those cuts to 30 percent by 2025, 42 percent by 2030, and more than 80 percent by 2050. These are the kind of strong national actions that a successful agreement requires.

The United States has also pursued an unprecedented effort to engage partners around the world in the fight against climate change, and we have produced real results. President Obama launched the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate which brought together key developed and developing countries to work through issues essential to an accord. He also spearheaded an agreement, first among the G-20 and then among the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation nations, to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. This effort alone could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent or more by 2050.

So there should be no doubt about our commitment. We have come to Copenhagen ready to take the steps necessary to achieve a comprehensive and operational new agreement that will provide a foundation for long-term, sustainable economic growth.

This needs to be a common effort. All major economies, developed and developing, need to take robust and transparent action to reduce their carbon emissions. Of course, the actions required of the developed and major developing countries will not be identical, but we must all do our part.

The simple fact is that nearly all of the growth in emissions in the next 20 years will come from the developing world. Without their participation and commitment, a solution is impossible. Some are concerned that a strong agreement on climate change will undermine the efforts of developing nations to build their economies, but the opposite is true. This is an opportunity to drive investment and job creation around the world, while bringing energy services to hundreds of millions of the world’s poor.

That is why United States is supporting an accord that both complements and promotes sustainable development by moving the world toward a low-carbon economy. The accord we seek will provide generous financial and technological support for developing countries, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable, to help them reduce emissions and adapt to climate change. And we are prepared to join an effort to mobilize fast-start funding that will ramp up to $10 billion in 2012 to support the adaptation and mitigation efforts of countries in need.

We can all see the way forward that has emerged from months of negotiations: decisive national action, an operational accord that internationalizes those commitments, assistance for nations that are the most vulnerable and least prepared to meet the effects of climate change, and standards of transparency that provide credibility to the entire process.

The United States is ready to embrace this path, and we hope that the rest of the world will rally around it this week.

AUSTIN - An unexpected letter from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the mother of hard-core Republican State Board of Education member David Bradley has him scrambling to find a Democratic "Hillary" bumper sticker.

The pursuit turned urgent after Houstonian Shirley Bradley received a letter from the secretary of state last week expressing delight over a story she read in the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News about the Bradley family.

Shirley Bradley often supports Democratic candidates and issues. Her two oldest sons are GOP politicians. David Bradley is the leader of the social conservatives on the State Board of Education, and John Bradley is the hard-nosed district attorney for Williamson County. Gov. Rick Perry recently named him to head the Texas Forensic Science Commission.

The newspaper story chronicled the family dynamics, with Shirley Bradley opposing the death penalty that her prosecutor son pushes. The story also described her car bumper that features her GOP son's State Board of Education bumper sticker alongside a "Hillary for President" sticker.

Someone recently stole the Hillary bumper sticker.

Bradley's hunt for a new sticker meant doing "some outreach" to folks who are not his political allies.

"Those folks aren't exactly in my playground," he said, laughing.

Shirley Bradley said she initially tossed the unopened Clinton mail into the junk pile because she assumed it was an appeal for money to help one of Houston's mayoral candidates.

Her husband, John Bradley, later opened the letter and told his wife that it was a personal note from Clinton, describing how she "enjoyed reading about your family in the Houston Chronicle" and how she should be proud of her sons' participation in the public square.

"I was terribly surprised. That's a nice follow-up thank you," Shirley Bradley said. "I'll probably frame it."

As far as the missing bumper sticker, she said she was upset at first.

"That's the meanness of some people. I have to let them have that meanness. It's not part of me," she said. "I'm not going to let somebody else spoil my day."

David Bradley has asked the president of the Houston Federation of Teachers for a new Hillary sticker.

The group supported her presidential campaign last year.

"We're working on it. We're asking staff to go through their political memorabilia file," said Gayle Fallon, head of the teachers' federation.

They've got extra Hillary T-shirts but have not yet found a spare bumper sticker.

By GARY SCHARRER, Houston Chronicle, December 11, 2009

Reporting from Washington - The Obama administration signaled its intention Friday to push for new sanctions against Iran, warning that tough new measures are likely now and urging reluctant nations not to circumvent them.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who is visiting Iraq, said world powers soon would agree on "significant additional sanctions." Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, meanwhile, warned in Washington that Latin American countries, in particular, will face "consequences" if they "flirt" with the Islamic Republic.

At the United Nations, top U.S. diplomats, including U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice, joined European officials in accusing Iran of sending weapons to Syria in a breach of a U.N. arms export ban.

The warnings came as a year-end deadline set by Western countries for Iranian cooperation is about to expire, and they represented the clearest sign yet that President Obama is ending efforts to engage Tehran.