Secretary Of State Visits Indonesia To Show That U.S. Is Under New Management

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday relentlessly hammered home the Obama administration's message that America is under new management and ready to listen and engage the world.

"When the United States is absent, people believe that we are not interested and that can create a vacuum that destructive forces can fill," she told a group of journalists after meeting with Indonesia's leader on the second leg of a weeklong Asia tour."We don't want to be absent. We want to be present."

Earlier, she took to the airwaves, appearing on a popular youth show in the world's most populous Muslim nation to deliver her message and bring greetings from President Barack Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia.

"There is so much excitement in the air here," she told an enthusiastic studio audience on the MTV-style "Dahsyat" show, which translates into English as "Awesome." She said she had just spoken with Obama who wished them all well, drawing cheers.

Much of her appearance was lighthearted banter about her favorite music the Beatles and Rolling Stones and her poor singing abilities, but she also made clear that Washington wants to address Muslim concerns about U.S. policy in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Asked about the topic, which has deeply troubled Indonesians, Clinton took a shot at the Bush administration when explaining why she and Obama had appointed a special envoy to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict immediately after taking office.

"We felt like the United States had not been as active in trying to bring the parties together to resolve the conflict," she said. "We're going to work very hard to resolve what has been such a painful and difficult conflict for so many years."

Clinton, who later left for South Korea and China, said she would attend a March 2 donors' conference in Egypt for rebuilding Gaza. The first stop on her four-nation Asia tour was Japan.

Though most of Indonesia's 190 million Muslims practice a moderate form of the faith, public anger ran high over U.S. policy in the Middle East and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years, fueling a small but increasingly vocal fundamentalist fringe. The country has been hit by a string of suicide bombings targeting Western interests in recent years, but experts say an effective police crackdown has sharply reduced the terror threat.

During her two-day visit, Clinton praised the government for its efforts to fight terrorism while respecting human rights and for its hard-won multiethnic democracy.

She also visited a poor neighborhood in central Jakarta that has received American assistance for maternal health and childcare, sanitation and water purification. Hundreds of people lined the narrow roads to greet her.

Earlier, Clinton announced plans to restart Peace Corps programs in Indonesia that were suspended in 1965 after volunteers were accused of espionage and expelled. She also promised to cooperate on climate change, trade, education and regional security.

She was warmly received, although small and scattered protests were held in several cities, with some Islamic hard-liners setting tires on fire and others throwing shoes at caricatures of the top U.S. diplomat.

After talks with Indonesian officials on Wednesday, Clinton said her choice of Asia for her first overseas trip as secretary of state was "no accident'' and a sign of a desire for broader and deeper relations with Indonesia and the rest of the continent on regional and global issues.
Clinton stressed the growing importance of Southeast Asia in particular, a region that often felt slighted by the Bush administration.

She visited the Jakarta headquarters of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and promised to attend the group's annual regional security conference, something that former Bush administration Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice skipped twice during her four years in office.

ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan welcomed the move, saying "the road to reconnecting with the Muslim world" might well run through this region.Indonesia, a secular nation of 235 million people, is often held up as a beacon of Islamic democracy and modernity.

It also has personal ties for Obama, who spent four years here as a child. In her television appearance on Thursday, Clinton pointed out that she had met some children from Obama's former elementary school, who she said "were adorable" as they sang and waved Indonesian and U.S. flags on her arrival.

She made no official comment following her 45-minute talk with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Thursday, but presidential spokesman Dino Pati Djalal said a formal invitation had been extended for Obama to visit, hopefully before the year's end.




The Associated Press, February 19, 2009

A well-received first trip abroad as secretary of state, listening not lecturing

UNTIL this week only one American secretary of state had made his first foreign trip to Asia: Dean Rusk, in 1961. So Hillary Clinton's decision to start her travels with a tour to Tokyo, Jakarta, Beijing and Seoul surprised even her hosts. The message seems to be that war elsewhere and economic turmoil may be the current preoccupations, but America's future environment will be shaped in Asia.

Besides, it is always good to go where you are welcome. It is not simply that President Barack Obama's four childhood years in Indonesia make him a hero there; nor that learners of English have cleaned out the Tokyo bookshops of volumes of his speeches. Rather, despite the damage George Bush did to America's prestige, in East Asia it remains high.

According to a recent survey of Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, China and Vietnam by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, America's "soft" power - ie, its ability to influence others through attraction rather than coercion - has actually grown. Everywhere, America ranked ahead of China in terms of soft power, measured as a mix of political, economic and cultural appeal. It ranked first in Japan, South Korea and China. In Indonesia and Vietnam it took second place, to Japan. That China limped in third overall clearly came as a surprise to the Chicago Council, which had roped in a noted China hand, David Shambaugh, to write up the findings.

Yet East Asia was somewhat neglected under Mr Bush, especially in the second term. The cause was partly bureaucratic. After it was launched in 2006, the "strategic economic dialogue" with China came to dominate the bilateral relationship at the expense of broader issues such as security and human rights. At times, it seemed relations were the sole preserve of the former treasury secretary, Hank Paulson.

As for the State Department, its East Asia agenda was consumed by North Korea, which exploded a nuclear device in October 2006. Mr Bush's assistant secretary of state for the region, Christopher Hill (who accompanied Mrs Clinton), focused on little else. This irked Japan. Not only did the United States appear to be neglecting its biggest Asian ally. Japanese and South Korean warnings against over-hasty deals with North Korea were also ignored.

America took the North off its blacklist of state sponsors of terror last autumn, in return for an oral promise about verification procedures for disabling facilities at its nuclear reactor. The North has since all but disowned the promise at the six-party talks aimed at getting it to disarm. Meanwhile, progress on tackling suspected uranium enrichment, nuclear proliferation and the North's existing handful of plutonium weapons remains as elusive as ever.

Now North Korea has grown shrill towards South Korea, which under President Lee Myung-bak does not want to give unconditional aid. The North may try to provoke a naval skirmish. Preparations for a long-range missile test appear under way, and another nuclear test cannot be ruled out. North Korea may yet dominate America's East Asia policy and attempt to drive wedges between America and its friends, as it did under Mr Bush.

In Japan Mrs Clinton had to mend a fence she broke herself. Laying out her stall in Foreign Affairs, a wonkish journal, in late 2007, she almost forgot Japan in her stress on China. There is no surer way to feed Japanese insecurities. Yet in Tokyo she hailed the security alliance with Japan as a cornerstone of American foreign policy. And she invited the prime minister, Taro Aso, to be the first foreign leader to meet Mr Obama, on February 24th (assuming he clings to office that long). Any new bonhomie, however, will be tested when America asks a foot-dragging Japan for more help abroad - for instance, by flying supplies into Afghanistan, now that overland routes from Pakistan are repeatedly subject to Taliban attacks.

Mrs Clinton is visiting Indonesia partly as a proxy for re-engaging with South-East Asia as a whole: the region badly wants continued American engagement as a counterbalance to China's growing military might. But Indonesia also matters as a huge Muslim nation, where, as the foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda, put it, "Islam and modernity can go hand-in-hand."

China, for its part, wants reassurance that not much will change, at a time of rising protectionist pressure in America. It was relieved not to have been demonised during the presidential campaign, and Mrs Clinton's talk of wishing it to be committed to international norms echoes the language of the Bush administration. China Daily, an official newspaper, has even expressed the hope that military exchanges, suspended last year over American arms sales to Taiwan, might be resumed. But Mrs Clinton's suggestion that dialogue has been too centred on the economic at the expense of the strategic gives Chinese policymakers the jitters.

In general, Mrs Clinton has appeared to be listening more than speaking. Still, it is possible that the biggest change in America's Asian diplomacy will be to put global warming near the heart of it. On the trip Mrs Clinton brought her special envoy on climate change, Todd Stern. China, the United States and Indonesia (because of deforestation) are the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. Japan has perhaps the best clean technology. China has yet to show any readiness to make specific commitments to cut carbon emissions. But if offered technological and other bribes, it might prefer not to be seen as an obstacle to the global agreement on carbon reductions hoped for late 2009. That would be a coup for Mrs Clinton's Asian diplomacy, though a distant goal for now.

The Economist, February 19, 2009

China literally changed Beijing's climate this week when it produced snow by seeding clouds with chemicals to help alleviate a three-month drought in north China, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

Clinton's focus will center on energy issues, as China now exceeds the U.S. as the world's leading emitter of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, a leading cause of climate change.

On Saturday, Clinton will tour a thermal power plant, which has partnered with General Electric that is 2 miles from Beijing's Olympic stadium known as the Bird's Nest.

The plant "is a showcase for cooperation between China and the U.S," says Jack Wen, president and CEO of GE Energy China. He says the plant fueled by natural gas is one of the cleanest in the country, which mostly uses coal-fired power plants.

"The new team in Washington, D.C., is really starting to give the international community some hope in dealing with climate change challenges," says Wu Changhua, the China director for The Climate Group, an independent advisory group. "It's crucial for the U.S. to start to demonstrate the leadership that's been missing for the past eight years."

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu co-produced a study released this month that urges Washington and Beijing to collaborate on climate change. "If these two countries cannot find ways to bridge the long-standing divide on this issue, there will literally be no solution," the report said.

One dispute during the Bush administration involved the U.N.-backed Kyoto Protocol, which set binding targets for industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gases by 2012. China, which ratified the accord in 2002, insists that it be treated as a developing nation and held to a lower standard. The United States has not ratified the accord, citing economic worries and arguing that nations such as China be held to the targets.

"We are at a historic opportunity here," says Alex Westlake of ClearWorld Energy in Beijing, which supports renewable energy projects. "The benefits to both countries' jobs and economies will be tremendous. I hope the U.S. will offer an olive branch ... and recognize the good work that China has been doing."

China's government and businesses have targeted renewable energy in recent years, from wind farms to pig farms.

At the Haikou Agriculture & Industry & Trade Co., on Hainan Island, Tang Shanrong captures methane gas from manure at 16 of the firm's 40 pig farms. "The government encourages us to do this … but it's difficult to make a quick profit," he says.

Ma Zhuguo, a climate change specialist at the government's Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, says, "The Chinese government has spent a lot of money and effort to reduce emissions in recent years. I think America itself should take more active measures to reduce emissions."

Despite different perspectives between the U.S. and China, GE's Wen says, "Everybody agrees on the goal - we need to figure out a way of cutting carbon to have a better world to live in."

By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY, February 19, 2009

Secretary of State Clinton and South Korean officials puzzle over whether and how Kim Jong Il will be replaced in the North. The chance of a new regime is already increasing instability in Asia.

Reporting from Seoul -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said today that U.S. officials and their allies are scrambling to prepare for the possible departure from power of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, a development she said threatened new turbulence in one of the world's most heavily armed regions.

Arriving in Seoul for security talks, Clinton said persistent signs within the secretive Pyongyang government suggest that a change of leadership might be at hand. She said the South Korean government has been especially concerned over what might be developing inside its impoverished northern neighbor.

Clinton was on the fifth day of a weeklong trip to East Asia focusing in part on what to do about North Korea, which is believed to have a handful of nuclear weapons.

U.S. intelligence agencies reported last August that Kim, the 67-year-old "Dear Leader" who has led the country since 1994, may have suffered a stroke or some other serious health setback. Some observers played down the report and some U.S. officials have said since that they believed Kim was once again in charge, if not at full capacity.

However, Clinton's comments suggested there is now a widespread conviction that Kim is on the way out, and that the South Koreans, Chinese, Americans and others are formulating plans for how best to deal with the successor regime.

The signs of disarray in the North have included the firing earlier this year of the defense minister and the military chief of staff. The promotion of one of Kim's three sons was announced -- then withdrawn, U.S. officials noticed.

Some observers see another sign in the sudden breakdown of the talks over dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal, and believe the regime's belligerent new tone may reflect the influence of emerging leaders.

Analysts have offered various ideas of what the new leadership might look like. Some say that Kim's brother-in-law or one of his three sons could be a part of a new leadership, but perhaps only as a figurehead.

Many experts fear that the successor regime, which will control the world's fifth-largest army, could be even less cooperative than Kim's.

Clinton said the United States and its allies are trying to figure out how to form a "common front" to restart the stalled nuclear negotiations, but pointed out that North Korea "has shown very little willingness to get back on track." She said the fact the north's leadership is now "somewhat unclear" has compounded the difficulties of working with the regime, making the diplomacy "a difficult undertaking."

The dangers of dealing with North Korea have been highlighted in recent weeks by reports that the regime is preparing to test a Taepodong 2 missile that many believe is capable of striking U.S. territory. North Korea isn't yet able to mount a nuclear weapon on the tip of its missiles, experts say.

The regime has made a series of threats against South Korea and the United States through its official news agency. Michael Green, a top Asia expert in the Bush administration who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said earlier this month that the chances for violence between North Korea and South Korea are increasing in the disputed waters west of the peninsula.

Obama administration officials have acknowledged that the outlook for the dealing with the North Korean threat is not encouraging. Advisors have said that the general gloom surrounding the issue has made it more difficult for the Obama administration to find a special envoy to handle the issue.

Clinton said the administration is also thinking about how to formulate a new international effort to deal with North Korea's ballistic missile program. The North continues to make progress on longer-range missiles, and secret sales of its missile technology to other governments are a major worry for world powers.

Clinton said that the missile issue was one of "great concern." She said she wanted to work with other countries to decide whether the issue would best be handled through the existing six-country forum or through a new approach.

One of Clinton's goals in her one-day visit to Seoul is to convince the embattled government of President Lee Myung-bak that the United States intends to stand up to the North, despite its promises that it will seek greater diplomatic engagement with adversary regimes.

Lee, a conservative, has brought down the wrath of the North upon himself by cutting off cash aid on grounds that Pyongyang is not living up to its commitments to the North-South peace effort. Many analysts believe that the North's recent threatening behavior has been aimed at undermining Lee, who is also in trouble politically at home because of the damaging effects of the world economic crisis on South Korea.

Clinton flies to Beijing on Saturday for talks with the Chinese government. She is interested in broadening U.S.-Chinese diplomacy to put new emphasis on non economic issues, including climate change. But her comments today underscored that discussions about of North Korea will also be central in China.

U.S. officials believe the Chinese have special influence with their smaller neighbor, and want Beijing to use its leverage again to try to force more cooperation.




By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2009

SEOUL, South Korea - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that North Korea's leadership situation is uncertain and the United States is worried the Stalinist country may soon face a succession crisis to replace dictator Kim Jong Il.

Clinton said the Obama administration is deeply concerned that a potential change in Pyongyang's ruling structure could raise already heightened tensions between North Korea and its neighbors as potential successors to Kim jockey for position and power.

Her comments, made to reporters during a flight to South Korea from Indonesia, were a rare if not unprecedented public acknowledgment from a senior U.S. official that the secretive nation may be preparing for a leadership change following reports that Kim suffered a stroke last year.

Clinton said the South Koreans are particularly worried "about what's up in North Korea, what the succession could be, what it means for them, and they are looking for us to use our best efforts to try to get the agenda of denuclearization and nonproliferation back in gear."

"Everybody is trying to sort of read the tea leaves as to what is happening and what is likely to occur, and there is a lot of guessing going on," Clinton said, referring to talks between Chinese, South Korean, Japanese and U.S. officials about the situation in the North.

"But there is also an increasing amount of pressure because if there is a succession, even if it's a peaceful succession, that creates more uncertainty and it may also encourage behaviors that are even more provocative as a way to consolidate power within the society," she said.

Kim, 67, inherited leadership from his father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, in 1994, creating the world's first communist dynasty. He rules the nation of 23 million people with brutal authority, allowing no opposition or dissent.

His failure to show up last September for a military parade marking the country's 60th anniversary spurred questions about the health of a man believed to have diabetes, heart disease and other chronic ailments.

Citing intelligence, South Korean and U.S. officials later said Kim suffered a stroke and underwent brain surgery in August.

North Korean officials have steadfastly denied Kim was ever ill.

However, state-run media made no mention of Kim's public appearances for weeks last fall, feeding fears that his sudden death without naming a successor could spark a power vacuum, internal struggle in the nuclear-armed nation or send scores of hungry North Koreans fleeing to China.

Clinton, who will visit China over the weekend, said she would be seeking advice in Seoul and Beijing about how to resume stalled six-nation disarmament talks given questions about Kim's health and who is now or may soon be in charge in Pyongyang.

"Our goal is to try to come up with a strategy that is effective in influencing the behavior of the North Koreans at a time when the whole leadership situation is somewhat unclear," she said.

"You add to the already difficult challenge of working with the North Koreans the uncertainties that come from questions about potential succession, this is a difficult undertaking," Clinton said.

Clinton's remarks came as North Korea stepped up belligerent rhetoric toward the United States and South Korea amid signs the North is planning to test fire what intelligence analysts believe is a long-range missile.

Just hours before Clinton arrived in Seoul, the North Korean military issued a statement accusing South Korean president Lee Myung-bak of misusing "nonexistent nuclear and missile threats" as a pretext to invade.

"The Lee Myung-Bak group of traitors should never forget that the (North) Korean People's Army is fully ready for an all-out confrontation," said the statement, carried by the Korean official news agency.

Clinton is to meet with Lee on Friday and said she would speak to him and others about how to defuse tensions between the two Koreas. "We don't want it to spiral up," she said.

Kim's father had cultivated a powerful cult of personality that encompassed him and his son. Many North Koreans still dutifully wear pins bearing Kim Il Sung's portrait, and the leaders' portraits hang on walls in every building in North Korea.

Kim Jong Il is believed to have at least three sons: Kim Jong Nam, in his late 30s; Kim Jong Chul, in his late 20s; and Kim Jong Un, a son in his mid-20s by another companion.

The eldest is believed to have been the favorite to succeed his father until he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport in 2001, reportedly to visit Tokyo Disneyland.

Last month, South Korean news agency Yonhap said the youngest, Kim Jong Un, was named Kim's heir apparent.

On Thursday, citing unnamed sources in Beijing, Yonhap said he registered his candidacy for the March 8 parliamentary elections in a sign the son is poised to become North Korea's next leader.

South Korean officials say they cannot confirm the reports.

By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press, February 19, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a very fun appearance on a local youth-oriented variety show here in Jakarta, the title of which translates to "Awesome."

"I heard I was going to be on an awesome show," she told the audience in an appearance that showed her lighter side.

Clinton talked about her favorite music. "I'm old. The Beatles and Rolling Stones," America's top diplomat insisted.

Clinton also revealed how her husband, former President Bill Clinton, can work and concentrate while listening to hard rock and jazz, but said she has to have classical music on when she concentrates.

The young hosts swooned when Clinton said she had just talked to President Obama, who lived in Indonesia for four years during his childhood and remains popular here, and said the president sent greetings to his homeland.

Clinton also referenced the school children she saw on her arrival yesterday, who greeted her at the airport waving American and Indonesian flags. She talked about reaching out to Indonesians, a key objective of her travel here to the world's most populous Muslim nation.

At the end of the program Clinton politely sidestepped the chance to make international headlines when she was asked to sing for the cameras. She laughed and said, "See all these people, they will leave if I sing."

Now we're off to South Korea and the third leg of Clinton's four country Asian tour.

By Martha Raddatz, ABC News, February 18, 2009

President Obama's first TV interview was with the Dubai-based, partly Saudi-funded Al Arabiya satellite channel. In passing, he faulted past American policy for too readily "dictating" in the Middle East. He had better things to say about Saudi King Abdullah's "courage" in trying to solve the Middle East crisis.

Vice President Joe Biden likewise has promised the world a sharp break from the prior Bush administration that, from his references, was apparently to blame for bouts of anti-Americanism abroad. He assured the Europeans at the Munich Security Conference that it was time to press the reset button in foreign policy, and pledged a new chapter in America's overseas relations.

On her initial tour abroad, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton re-emphasized the Obama and Biden message, announcing that she would follow an approach that "values what others have to say." And then Clinton elaborated on this now well-worn "blame Bush" theme: "Too often in the recent past, our government has acted reflexively before considering available facts and evidence or hearing the perspectives of others." America, Clinton promised, from now on would be "neither impulsive nor ideological."

Contrast such admirable talk with recent events:

-- North Korea has just announced that it plans to launch a new Taepodong-2 missile capable of reaching the United States.

-- China, which holds hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. Treasury bonds and will be asked to loan us billions more, advised the Obama administration to drop the "buy American" talk in the new Democratic stimulus program.

-- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently bragged that his country would soon go nuclear, and that Obama's offer to talk without preconditions revealed a new passivity in the West.

-- Russia just announced that it had developed a strategic relationship with Iran, and warned that American-sponsored missile defense for Eastern Europe is unpalatable.

-- About the same time, the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, on Russian advice, disclosed that it may no longer allow Americans to use a base there to supply the war effort in Afghanistan.

-- Pakistan just released from house arrest A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, who had sold nuclear technologies to the likes of Libya and North Korea.

This rather provocative behavior reminds us that Obama's laudable assurances of a new age of American diplomacy may often be ignored - or exploited - rather than always appreciated. North Korea, for example, may agree with Clinton's criticism of the United States the last eight years - and thereby announce to her that it feels less obligated to keep promises once made with an "impulsive" United States.

European governments in France, Germany, Italy and most of Eastern Europe have long been pro-American. India is friendly; so is most of Asia. Africa has received billions of dollars in recent American help to combat AIDS.

These friends of ours may privately be worrying that a kinder, more eloquent antithesis to George W. Bush will lead to too much dialogue and not enough leadership.

The last president to promise such a grandiose break from the American past was Jimmy Carter. Given the depressing nature of the world abroad, the more we now keep promising to be gentle, the bigger the stick later on we will have to carry.

By Victor Davis Hanson, San Francisco Chronicle, February 19, 2009

SEOUL, South Korea - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that a potential power struggle to succeed North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, had injected a troubling new element into negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program.

The jockeying to succeed Mr. Kim, 67, who suffered a stroke last August and has only partially recovered, raises pressure on the United States, South Korea, China, and other countries to revive the sputtering negotiations, Mrs. Clinton said to reporters on her plane before arriving in Seoul.

"If there is a succession, even if it's a peaceful succession, that creates more uncertainty, and it may also encourage behaviors that are even more provocative, as a way to consolidate power within the society," said Mrs. Clinton, on her first foreign trip as secretary of state.

Her comments were an extremely rare instance of a senior American official speaking publicly about life after Mr. Kim, the mercurial dictator who turned his isolated country into a nuclear rogue state.

Mrs. Clinton did not offer scenarios about how succession might play out in one of the world's most secretive countries, saying she first wanted to consult with officials in South Korea and China.

"There is a lot of guessing going on," she said. "We're going to have to try to feel our way forward."

State Department officials said there were clear signs of political ferment in North Korea, including its recent threats to test a long-range ballistic missile, Mr. Kim's dismissal of his defense minister, and conflicting reports over whether he anointed his youngest son as his successor.

North Korea's bellicose behavior has cast a shadow over Mrs. Clinton's trip, and promises to dominate her agenda when she meets Friday with South Korea's president, Lee Myung-bak. It will also figure high when she flies to Beijing for a weekend meeting with President Hu Jintao.

"This is an especially important time for South Korea, as they are confronting a lot of worries about what's up in North Korea, what the succession could be, what it means for them," Mrs. Clinton said.

"Our goal," she added, "is try to come up with a strategy that is effective in influencing the behavior of the North Koreans, at a time when the whole leadership situation is somewhat unclear."

The issue of succession in North Korea is widely discussed among analysts and intelligence experts, and privately, by government officials. But governments decline to discuss it publicly.

China has been particularly reluctant - going so far as to arrest a leading North Korea expert, Jin Xide of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, for speaking about the health of Mr. Kim.

American officials can only make a stab at judging Mr. Kim's condition. In his annual threat assessment, submitted to Congress last week, Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, said while Mr. Kim's stroke had hindered his ability to operate as actively as he did before, his health had improved significantly and he appeared to be making key decisions.

North Korea celebrated Mr. Kim's 67th birthday on Monday, with a synchronized swimming display and other events. There were no reports that the man known as the "Dear Leader" appeared at any of the festivities.

Last month, South Korean news media reported that Mr. Kim has picked his third and youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor. Mr. Kim's eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, later told reporters in Beijing than his father alone would decide who will succeed him.

Mrs. Clinton said the United States was eager to defuse tensions between North Korea and South Korea, though she acknowledged that would be difficult in the current tense atmosphere.

A South Korean newspaper reported this week that North Korea had constructed an underground facility to enrich uranium near Yongbyon, where its plutonium facilities are located - fanning suspicions that it is running a clandestine program to produce fuel for bombs.

Mrs. Clinton, as she did earlier this week, played down concerns about North Korea having a covert uranium-enrichment program and said too much focus on it could distract from the need to confront North Korea over its publicly declared nuclear activities.

"I worry that, you know, they're straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel," Mrs. Clinton said, invoking a Biblical verse that refers to those who obsess over small problems while neglecting big ones.

On Friday, she is scheduled to meet with the commander of American forces in South Korea, Gen. Walter L. Sharp, to assess the threatened missile launch. North Korea's only other test of a long-range missile, in 2006, ended in failure seconds after the rocket left the launch pad.

Mrs. Clinton said she would explore whether the missile program should be included in the six-party negotiations with North Korea, which includes the United States, South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia.

The Obama administration said it was committed to the six-party talks, but Mrs. Clinton said she was interested in exploring whether neighbors like China could exert greater influence on North Korea.

"North Korea is on China's border, and I want to understand better what the Chinese believe is doable," she said.

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

A stable, open China is in America's best interests.

Washington - When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton touches down in Beijing this week she will face an authoritarian Chinese government wringing their hands over a remarkably brazen online petition for human rights and an end to autocratic rule that is circulating among its citizens.

This petition, Charter 08, is not what China's rulers expect to talk about with Secretary Clinton on her first trip abroad for the new Obama administration. She should insist that they do.

The reason: Charter 08 is the longest sustained human rights campaign in China since the Tiananmen Square massacre 20 years ago this June and continues to spread throughout China despite the government's best attempts.

It was released by Chinese intellectuals, lawyers, and dissidents on the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Dec. 10 and has since been signed by over 8,000 ordinary Chinese citizens, who are bravely displaying their names, addresses, and occupations online for all to see, including China's fearsome secret police.

Clinton should capitalize on the momentum created by the charter to promote a responsible human rights agenda. To be sure, much has changed in China since Tiananmen Square.

But, despite progress in realizing social and economic rights and some increases in individual freedoms, China today remains responsible for profound violations of its people's civil and political rights, from restrictions on free expression and religious freedom to detention without trial, torture, excessive use of the death penalty, involuntary resettlement, and forced abortions. In its foreign policy, China often backs repressive regimes around the world, including Sudan and Myanmar (Burma), and waters down international sanctions against them.

America and China's interrelated responsibilities to address climate change are expected to dominate Clinton's conversations with the Chinese. Cutting greenhouse-gas emissions is critical to our bilateral relations and to the health and prosperity of the planet. But China is unlikely to meet its environmental obligations without the accountability provided by democracy and human rights.

In addition to the Tiananmen anniversary, 2009 is also a year of multiple significant political anniversaries as well as the year for China's evaluation under the UN Universal Periodic Review. In fact, the Human Rights Council and several UN member states have called on China to extend to its citizens - especially ethnic minorities, journalists, and human rights defenders - full access to human rights.

In anticipation, the Chinese government has already intensified security. Strong crackdowns against protesters in Tibet have been under way since January. Authors of Charter 08 have been harassed and detained. Beijing police barred organizers of the "20 Year Anniversary of China/Avant-Garde Exhibition" from hosting events, and other Tiananmen-related crackdowns are likely to continue in the coming months as the government attempts to avoid Tiananmen-related "embarrassment."

The Obama administration should not allow these anniversaries - and the human rights values they represent - to go forgotten. Not only does the United States have a moral obligation to confront human rights issues in China, but it is in the best strategic interests of the US to do so. Given the high degree of interdependence between the US and Chinese economies and China's growing military reach, American interests are best served by a stable China with a robust commitment to the rule of law. Those conditions are undermined by a failure to respect human rights.

Recalling her groundbreaking pronouncement as first lady at the 1995 Beijing Women's Conference that "Women's rights are human rights," Clinton should take similar advantage of this week's discussions to persuade China that it will not be able to address these pressing issues successfully if it ignores human rights. The secretary must stress that greater democracy and human rights will be integral to China if it is to be the highly respected global leader it aspires to be.

No one is better placed than Clinton with her international reputation for hard-headedness and high ideals to help China make the connection between greater freedom and respect for the rule of law and more effective government and less civil unrest. Her message should be straightforward: It's a new day in America and can be a new day in US-China relations, but bilateral relations will never be fully harmonious without real progress on human rights.

By William F. Schulz, Sarah Dreier and Winny Chen, The Christian Science Monitor, February 19, 2009

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Reaching out to the world's most populous Muslim country and the boyhood home of her new boss, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to Indonesia on Wednesday to pay tribute to its hard-won political freedoms.

"Indonesia has experienced a great transformation in the last 10 years," she said, referring to the Asian financial crisis of 1998, which led to the ouster of General Suharto, its autocratic president, and set Indonesia on the path to becoming a robust democracy.

"If you want to know if Islam, democracy, modernity and women's rights can coexist, go to Indonesia," she said at a dinner of academics, journalists, environmentalists and women's rights advocates.

Mrs. Clinton said her decision to come to Jakarta - a nearly 7,000-mile detour between stops in Japan and South Korea - was also motivated by a desire to recognize the importance of Southeast Asia, a region that the Obama administration believes was neglected by the Bush administration.

To underline that point, she announced that the United States would begin the process of signing on to a treaty with the Association of Southeast Asian Nation that would bind it closer to the 10-member group, which includes Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

But Mrs. Clinton harshly criticized another Asean member, Myanmar, noting that the United States was reviewing its policy of economic sanctions against the military junta that runs the country, formerly known as Burma. She professed frustration that the government was seemingly impervious to pressure.

"Clearly, the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn't influenced the Burmese junta," Mrs. Clinton said to reporters after meeting with Indonesia's foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda. "Reaching out and trying to engage them hasn't worked either," she said.

Mrs. Clinton did not elaborate on what steps the United States was contemplating. Indonesia, which is also critical of the junta, believes Myanmar's neighbors need to exert more pressure against it, according to Mr. Wirajuda.

After President Obama's recent, highly visible appeal to the Islamic world in an interview with Al Arabiya, the Dubai-based satellite television station, and similar overtures by Mrs. Clinton, she seemed sensitive about focusing on Muslims at the expense of other religious groups.

"There is no pigeonholing; there is no exclusivity," she said. "We are reaching out to the entire world."

The United States, Mrs. Clinton said, was seeking a broader partnership with Indonesia, particularly in areas like climate change. Indonesia has become one of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases, largely because of its extensive deforestation.

She announced that the Indonesian government had agreed to negotiations to allow the Peace Corps to return to the country after a 43-year absence. Peace Corps volunteers were forced out of the country in 1965 in the turmoil that culminated in a military coup by General Suharto.

Mrs. Clinton also praised Jakarta for its fight against Islamic extremism, echoing the annual threat assessment submitted to Congress last week by the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair.

The report said Indonesia's counterterrorism efforts had led to the jailing of numerous operatives of Jemaah Islamiya, a radical group responsible for the deadly Bali bombing in 2002. While the group still poses a threat, the report said, its abilities have been significantly degraded.

Mrs. Clinton has asked colleagues whether Indonesia holds lessons for Pakistan, a large, but much less stable Muslim country. The answer is far from clear, given the distinct differences in Pakistani and Javanese culture, and the different role religion plays in the two societies.

Mrs. Clinton said Indonesia, as one of the Group of 20 nations, had a clear role to play in recovering from the global economic crisis. Mr. Wirajuda said Indonesia still expected to eke out some growth this year, but the government has expressed concern about rising protectionism in foreign markets.

Indonesia's wrenching experience in the late-1990s - when its currency plunged and its banks fell into insolvency - makes it feel especially vulnerable to the threat of cross-border economic contagion.

Still, Indonesia is in many ways a good-news story - and never more so than now. At the airport in Jakarta, Mrs. Clinton was serenaded by children from the Besuki school, which Mr. Obama attended as a fourth grader in 1970. She seemed tickled, and swayed in unison with the children.

"I've already been asked, over and over again, 'When is he coming?' " Mrs. Clinton said, with mock exasperation. She suggested that Mr. Obama save the visit for a time when his job was really getting to him and he needed a morale boost.




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

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is hoping to rehabilitate America's image abroad, especially with Muslims, during a visit to Indonesia and to strengthen economic and development ties with Southeast Asia.

She arrived Wednesday, her second stop in an inaugural overseas trip as the top U.S. diplomat.

While in Jakarta, Clinton intends to announce plans to step up U.S. engagement with Southeast Asia, stressing the growing importance of a region that often felt slighted by the Bush administration.

Her two-day schedule in Indonesia includes a visit to the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) secretariat and she is likely to signal U.S. intent to sign the regional bloc's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. Clinton will also pledge to attend the group's annual foreign ministers meeting in Thailand this year, U.S. officials said.

Development and climate change also will top the agenda during her meetings with Indonesian leaders, along with the Iranian nuclear dispute and the war in Afghanistan.

Indonesia is the world's most populous Islamic nation, and it has personal ties for President Barack Obama, who spent four years of his childhood here. Among those who turned out at the airport to welcome Clinton were 44 children from his former elementary school, singing traditional folks songs and waving Indonesian and U.S. flags.

During Clinton's first stop in Japan, her two days of talks focused mostly on North Korea's belligerent rhetoric and threats of a missile test, and on the global financial crisis. After 24 hours in Indonesia, she travels to South Korea and China, where Pyongyang will again likely be a major topic.

But in Tokyo on Tuesday, Clinton previewed the new approach to dialogue she will try out in Southeast Asia. During a town hall student meeting, she said that the United States was under new management.

"America is ready to listen again," she said. "Too often in the recent past, our government has not heard the different perspectives of people around the world. In the Obama administration, we intend to change that."

Later, in response to a student question about the Bush administration's perceived "prejudice" against Muslims in the war on terrorism, Clinton lamented that America's failure to communicate its intentions with the world is "one of the central security challenges we face."

She also acknowledged that the task had gotten harder because of the hugely unpopular war in Iraq, which she supported as a senator, but came to oppose. That conflict, she said, was "viewed as wrong by many in the world."

"I think that the war on Iraq made our argument more difficult because although they just had peaceful elections, as you know, that they never would have had under Saddam Hussein, the process was extremely controversial," Clinton said.

Still, she stressed, the administration would not shy from the topic.

"I think you will see from President Obama and those of us in his administration a concerted effort to present a different position to the Islamic world without in any way stopping our efforts to prevent terrorism," Clinton said.

By MATTHEW LEE, The Associated Press, Februaru 18, 2009

In Japan, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton answers a student's question about playing baseball with men on the team. Clinton touches on topics across the spectrum.

Reporting from Tokyo -- The young woman with pigtails asked in a tiny voice how to get along on a baseball team with lots of bigger, more powerful men.

"I've played a lot of baseball," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the woman and the other young people in an audience at the University of Tokyo. "I've played with a lot of boys. The most important advice is to do what's true to yourself."

But parts of the Bush legacy cannot be easily dismissed. Clinton spent about 30 minutes with the families of Japanese who were abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and '80s, a highly emotional issue in Japan. Tokyo insists that the fate of the abductees, as they are known, must be resolved before there can be any normalization of relations with North Korea.

The Bush administration's sympathy on the abductees issue left Japanese leaders wrong-footed when the U.S. then struck a deal with North Korea on its nuclear program, an accord that led Washington to remove the country last year from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

In their meeting, the families urged Clinton to return North Korea to that list as a means of pressuring the regime to provide information on what happened to their loved ones. But American officials said Clinton, though sympathetic, made no commitments.




By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times, February 17, 2009

But ask them about Kim's decision to defy the world by launching a long-range missile over Japan in 1998, and their scorn often gives way to nationalist pride.

"They say: 'That was awesome. Those were Korean engineers who made it fly and work,' " says Daniel Pinkston, senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, who's interviewed North Korean defectors.

The reclusive regime in Pyongyang is back to its old tricks, upstaging U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's first foreign trip this week by threatening to launch a long-range missile and lobbing bellicose rhetoric at the South Korean government.

Speaking in Tokyo on Tuesday, Clinton warned that a missile launch would be "very unhelpful." She repeated her offer of a peace treaty and normalized diplomatic relations if North Korea keeps a promise to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. She arrives in Seoul on Thursday for consultations with the South Korean government.

"They're not irrational. They're not stupid," Pinkston says about North Korea. "Based on the criterion of staying in power, Kim is absolutely brilliant."

For one thing, the bristly approach to the outside world - and its expensive nuclear weapons program - appeases potential coupmakers in the military, which is lavished with an annual budget equal to as much as 25% of the country's economic output, according to U.S. State Department estimates. Kim calls it his "Military First" policy. For comparison, South Korea spends less than 3% of its much larger gross domestic product on its military.

Keeping the generals happy may be even more important than usual as Kim considers a successor, after turning 68 on Monday and recovering from an apparent stroke last year.

North Korea's outrageous behavior is good for getting attention around the world, something North Korea craves. "When they are feeling ignored, they feel a need to take provocative behavior," says Wendy Sherman, a State Department troubleshooter on North Korean issues during President Clinton's administration.

North Korea spoiled former South Korean president Roh Moo Hyun's 2003 inauguration, for instance, by firing a cruise missile into the Sea of Japan the day before he took office.

These provocations can give North Korea diplomatic leverage: The Bush administration dropped its policy of almost unremitting hostility toward Pyongyang after North Korea tested a nuclear device in October 2006. The following February, North Korea agreed to shut down its nuclear weapons program in return for aid, including oil - though the deal is now in jeopardy.

"What they always get is economic support," says former South Korean intelligence analyst Sohn Kwang Joo. "North Korea tends to take these actions because it gives them more chits on the table." For that reason, she advises U.S. negotiators to try to "catch North Korea when it's on good behavior" - and has less to bargain with.

Pinkston says launching a missile is a can't-lose move for Pyongyang, which claims the launch is to put up a civilian satellite. If the U.S. doesn't intercept the missile, it means America blinked. If the U.S. shoots and misses, North Korea can claim a victory over U.S. technology. If the U.S. destroys the missile, North Korea can play the victim, saying the Americans wouldn't let a poor country have a civilian space program. And a successful launch would improve the regime's reputation with its people.

"Where's the bad outcome for North Korea in this?" Pinkston asks.

Sohn, now chief editor of the Daily NK website on North Korean affairs, says North Korea wants to bully the Obama administration into letting it keep its nukes. "They want to be another India and to be another Pakistan," agrees Kim Sung Han, a professor of international relations at Korea University.

Sohn recommends stringing along negotiations until Kim Jong Il dies and a more open-minded successor takes power, perhaps one willing to end the country's economic and political isolation as Deng Xiaoping did for China.

Sherman, the former State Department adviser, is skeptical. "Every administration for the last many years has come into office believing in the eminent fall of the North Korean government," she says. The North Koreans "have faced famine. They have faced a failed economy. But the North has again and again proved its resilience."

By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY, February 17, 2009

TOKYO - In words and gestures, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offered reassurance to Japan on Tuesday, calling its alliance with the United States a "cornerstone" of American foreign policy and meeting with families of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea.

Mrs. Clinton then departed on Wednesday for Jakarta, Indonesia, the second stop on a four-country tour that includes stops in South Korea and China. As with the stopover in Japan, the visit to Indonesia is steeped in symbolism: it is the first Muslim country she will visit and the start of what she said would be a "concerted effort" by the Obama administration to bring a new message to the Islamic world.

Mrs. Clinton may also lay the groundwork for a visit by President Obama, who lived in Jakarta as a boy. She has told colleagues that she is fascinated by Indonesia's ability to achieve political stability after its economic crisis in the late 1990s, and that she wonders if it holds any lessons for Pakistan.

While in Japan, Mrs. Clinton carried an invitation from Mr. Obama to Prime Minister Taro Aso to meet him in Washington next Tuesday. Mr. Aso will be the first foreign leader received at the Obama White House.

Saber-rattling by North Korea has already cast a shadow over Mrs. Clinton's first trip as secretary of state, forcing her to confront an issue that evokes a complex range of feelings among the North's neighbors.

In Japan, where animosity toward North Korea runs deep because of the plight of the abductees, Mrs. Clinton said she met with the families "to express my personal sympathy and our concern for what happened."

During the meeting, several family members said, Mrs. Clinton pledged her support for resolving questions about the abductees - the fate of many of whom remains unknown even after three decades. But she stopped short of promising concrete steps to press North Korea on the issue.

The relatives said that Mrs. Clinton spent most of the 30-minute meeting listening to their accounts. Sakie Yokota, whose daughter, Megumi, was kidnapped from Japan in 1977 at age 13, said she gave Mrs. Clinton a copy of her book about her daughter and an extra copy for Mr. Obama.

"She is also a mother, and she said that any mother would fight to the end if such a thing happened to her," Mrs. Yokota said.

But when she asked Mrs. Clinton to punish North Korea by restoring it to Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism - it was removed by the Bush administration last year - Mrs. Clinton was noncommittal, saying only that she "would think about it," Mrs. Yokota said.

The relatives said it was noteworthy that Mrs. Clinton had met them, saying it sent a signal to North Korea not to ignore the issue. But they also showed disappointment in her offer to normalize relations with North Korea if it abandoned its nuclear program.

Shigeo Izuka, whose sister was kidnapped in 1978, said he implored Mrs. Clinton "not to become friendly with North Korea because of a nuclear agreement." He said she listened to him "with intense concern in her eyes, but I felt in my heart that this issue will be all too easily forgotten."

North Korea has admitted to abducting Mrs. Yokota's daughter and Mr. Izuka's sister and says that both later died in North Korea. The families reject the North's account, saying they want a full investigation.

Mrs. Clinton said Washington would not relent in its pressure on North Korea to get it to give up its nuclear weapons program in a way that was verifiable. "We are watching very closely," she said.

But she repeated Mr. Obama's pledge to "reach out a hand to those with which we have differences." And she committed to continuing the multiparty talks with the North Korean government that also involve China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

Mrs. Clinton's busy day also included afternoon tea with Empress Michiko at the imperial residence and a town hall meeting at Tokyo University.

Fielding a question from a student about American economic sanctions against Myanmar, formerly Burma, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that the policy had not brought any significant changes to the country, which is ruled by a military junta. She said the Obama administration was reviewing its options, although she did not give details.

Mrs. Clinton had dinner with Prime Minister Aso, followed by a meeting with his political nemesis, Ichiro Ozawa, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

After the meeting, Mr. Ozawa said that he told Mrs. Clinton that he valued the alliance with the United States, but that he emphasized that he wanted the relationship to be on a more equal footing, criticizing the current government for following Washington too slavishly.

By Mark Landler and Martin Fackler, The New York Times, February 17, 2009

Thousands of security forces were being deployed in the Indonesian capital ahead of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's visit to the world's most populous Muslim nation - the second stop on her Asian tour, officials said.

Clinton arrives Wednesday for talks that are expected to focus on Southeast Asia's growing importance in the region, the Iranian nuclear dispute and the war in Afghanistan, said Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda.

He was encouraged that Indonesia, childhood home to President Barack Obama, was among her first trips abroad as America's top diplomat.

Obama probably wants to capitalize on his emotional ties to the nation of 235 million as he seeks to improve relations with the rest of the Muslim world, said Christianto Wibisono, an expert on U.S.-Indonesian relations.

The government "should capitalize on that access," he said, pointing to the need for increased U.S. investment, military training and education of moderate Muslims to combat a growing extremist threat.

Bantarto Bandoro, a foreign policy expert at the University of Indonesia, said the United States' main goal will be to make sure Indonesia - a former dictatorship that has in the last decade seen citizens vote directly for president, freed up the media and struck down repressive laws - continues to move toward full-fledged democracy.

The fear is that any backward slide could threaten stability in region, Bandoro said.

Security was tight ahead of Clinton's visit, with 2,800 police being deployed in Jakarta along with members of the army and the U.S. Secret Service, said Col. Zulkarnain, who like many here uses only one name.

Indonesia, often held up as a beacon of Islamic democracy and modernity, is a secular nation.

Most of its 190 million Muslims practice a moderate form of the faith, but public anger ran high over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years, fueling a small but increasingly vocal fundamentalist fringe.

The Southeast Asian militant group, Jemaah Islamiyah, has carried out a series of suicide bombings in Indonesia targeting Western interests since 2002, killing more than 240 people, many of them foreign tourists. But experts say a police crackdown has severely weakened the movement, the last attack occurred more than three years ago.

The Associated Press, February 17, 2009

Burma, N. Korea Also Major Topics in Tokyo

TOKYO, Feb. 17 -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that the Obama administration will make "a concerted effort" to restore the image of the United States in the Islamic world and will seek to "enlist the help of Muslims around the world against the extremists."

Clinton, who on Wednesday will travel to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, told students at Tokyo University: "This is one of the central security challenges we face -- as to how to better communicate in a way that gets through the rhetoric and through the demagogy and is heard by people who can make judgments about what we stand for and who we truly are."

Clinton's remarks came in response to a question about terrorism causing people in the United States to have anti-Muslim "prejudice," a term she rejected forcefully. "I am a Christian," she said. "Through the centuries we have had many people who have done terrible things in the name of Christianity. They have perverted the religion."

Clinton's visit to Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, appears to be part of the administration's effort to reach out to Muslims during this week-long trip to Asia. President Obama spent part of his childhood in Jakarta, and expectations are high in Indonesia that he will visit later this year.

The town hall gathering came at the end of a busy first day of diplomacy for Clinton, who crisscrossed Japan's capital in an effort to mix statecraft and personal outreach to the Japanese people.

Clinton visited a shrine early in the morning, then signed an agreement moving 8,000 troops from Japan to Guam; she had tea with Empress Michiko in the imperial residence and took questions from students for an hour before having dinner with Prime Minister Taro Aso. She then followed that with a meeting with Aso's political nemesis, Ichiro Ozawa, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan.

She extended an invitation to Aso to meet next week with Obama, a coup for an embattled politician whose approval ratings sank this week to the single digits. But during the news conference announcing the invitation, Aso's finance minister -- and an Aso confidant -- resigned over reports that he appeared drunk at a major economic meeting last weekend.

Clinton also held a private 20-minute meeting with two families of Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korean agents decades ago, an emotional subject in Japan. The Bush administration last year removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, despite protests from the Japanese government, in a bid to win Pyongyang's cooperation in the impasse over its nuclear program.

Clinton met with Sakie and Shigeru Yokota, parents of Megumi Yokota, who was abducted when she was 13, and Shigeo Iizuka, elder brother of Yaeko Taguchi, who was abducted at age 22. According to Teruaki Masumoto, a brother of an abductee and advocate for abductee families, the Yokotas showed photos of Megumi and Clinton asked what happened to Taguchi's two children, who were left behind when their mother was abducted.

Masumoto said the three Japanese came out of the meeting with the impression that Clinton had listened eagerly and showed personal interest in the issue. The Yokotas and Iizuka gave Clinton two English-language copies of Sakie Yokota's book, which details her struggle as a parent of an abductee -- one for her and one for Obama -- and a letter urging her to "seriously consider re-listing North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism."

But Masumoto said Clinton did not make clear statements in response to the family members' request to put North Korea back on the terrorist list. A senior administration official quoted Clinton as saying she would "look into it."

North Korea abducted at least 16 Japanese, starting in 1977, apparently to obtain Japanese teachers. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has conceded that the abductions took place and has returned five Japanese, but the North Korean government has refused to provide details on others, who it says have died.

At the town hall meeting, Clinton also said that the administration was reviewing policy on Burma, suggesting it was considering a major shift that would ease some of the strict economic sanctions the United States has imposed on the junta that has long kept under house arrest Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Prize-winning democracy activist.

"We're looking at what steps could influence the current Burmese government, and we're looking at ways we could help the Burmese people," she said.

By Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post, February 18, 2009

TOKYO (AP) - President Barack Obama's administration is reviewing its policy toward Myanmar to see if it can more effectively promote reform in the military-ruled Southeast Asian nation, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday.

Clinton, on her first trip abroad as the top U.S. diplomat, said Washington "is looking at what steps we might take that might influence the current Burmese government and we're also looking for ways that we could more effectively help the Burmese people."

The U.S. Government refers to Myanmar as Burma, the country's name before it was changed in 1989 by the ruling junta.

Washington applies political and economic sanctions against Myanmar because of its poor human rights record and failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government. It also seeks the freedom of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi - who has been detained for 13 of the last 19 years - and an estimated 2,100 other political prisoners.

"We want to see a time when citizens of Burma and the Nobel prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi can live freely in their own country," Clinton said at a town hall meeting at Tokyo University in response to a question from a woman who said she was from Myanmar.

The issue of Myanmar democracy was taken up by former first lady Laura Bush, and had bipartisan backing in Congress. But the junta in Myanmar has shown little inclination to make political reforms, and instead cracked down violently on mass pro-democracy protests in September 2007 and sentenced many dissidents to long jail terms.

Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. The current junta came to power in 1988 after crushing pro-democracy demonstrations and killing as many as 3,000 people. It called elections in 1990 but refused to honor the results when Suu Kyi's political party won overwhelmingly.

The Associated Press, February 17, 2009

TOKYO - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her first full day on a weeklong tour of Asia, warned North Korea on Tuesday not to undertake a test of a long-range missile, as it has threatened.

"The possible missile launch that North Korea is talking about would be very unhelpful in moving our relationship forward," Mrs. Clinton said after a meeting with the Japanese foreign minister, Hirofumi Nakasone.

North Korea's saber rattling has cast a shadow over Mrs. Clinton's inaugural foreign trip, as has Japan's deteriorating economy, which was reflected Monday when the government reported the country's deepest quarterly economic contraction since 1974.

Mrs. Clinton reaffirmed the importance of the alliance between Japan and the United States, bringing an invitation from President Obama to Prime Minister Taro Aso to meet him at the White House next Tuesday. He will be the first foreign leader received at the White House.

In Mrs. Clinton's first bit of diplomatic business, the United States and Japan signed an agreement Tuesday to begin shifting thousands of marines from Okinawa to Guam, part of a realignment of troops in the Pacific.

Later on Tuesday she was to meet with families of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. Mr. Nakasone said her meeting underscored American support for the abductees, an issue that stirs deep animosity toward North Korea in Japan.

As she arrived in Japan on Monday, North Korea issued an oblique statement responding to news reports that it was preparing to test-launch a Taepodong-2 missile from a base on its east coast. "One will come to know later what will be launched," the North's state-run news agency, KCNA, said.

In Seoul, the South Korean defense minister, Lee Sang-hee, said North Korea had been preparing to test a Taepodong-2 missile since January.





By Mark Landler, The New York Times, February 16, 2009

Japanese Heartened To Top Her Itinerary

TOKYO, Feb. 16 -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived here on the first stop of her Asian tour Monday, declaring that she wanted "to create networks of partners in order to deal with the problems that no nation, even ours, can deal with alone," such as climate change and the global economic crisis.

Clinton, at an elaborate arrival ceremony, lauded the U.S.-Japanese partnership, calling it "a cornerstone of our efforts around the world." She addressed a group of dignitaries that included two female Japanese astronauts who participated in the U.S. space shuttle program and Japanese Special Olympics athletes who recently completed a competition in Idaho.

Clinton is the first secretary of state in nearly 50 years to start his or her tenure with a trip to Asia, a contrast to the European and Middle Eastern tours that usually take precedence. On arrival here, she emphasized that she had selected Asia for her first overseas trip as chief U.S. diplomat to underscore the importance she places on U.S. transpacific relationships.

But for Japan, even greater importance is attached to the symbolism of Tokyo meriting the first stop of her swing through Asia. Her arrival breaks a dispiriting run of bad news for the Japanese government. The export-dependent economy is sinking fast and the prime minister's popularity even faster.

The visit also helps sooth a national neurosis called "Japan passing." The term came to haunt Japan after President Bill Clinton made a nine-day visit to China in 1998, and never dropped by Japan to say hello.

That non-visit by the secretary of state's husband helped spark what has become a chronic Japanese worry: that the focus of U.S. policy in East Asia has permanently shifted to China, when it is not focused on the question of persuading North Korea to get rid of its nuclear weapons.

"The fact that Secretary Clinton is making her first foreign trip to Japan is in itself an important and welcome message," said Takeshi Akamatsu, a spokesman at the Foreign Ministry. "We still have the memories of Bill Clinton flying over us."

As if to emphasize her interest in Japan, Clinton will mix high diplomacy -- including dinner with Prime Minister Taro Aso -- with cultural and symbolic events, such as tea with the empress and a visit to a shrine. She also will meet with the families of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s, a highly emotional subject in Japan, and hold a town hall meeting at Tokyo University.

"I think it's important that we get out of the ministerial buildings and listen to the people in the countries where I'll be visiting," Clinton told reporters traveling with her.

This Clinton visit, however, may still end up worrying the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which has more or less run Japan as a one-party state since World War II. Under Aso, the ruling party is in desperate trouble.

Aso's approval ratings, after less than half a year in power, have sunk below 10 percent. And the economy is sliding into an "unimaginable" recession, the chief economist at Japan's central bank said last week, citing plunging numbers for industrial output and surging bankruptcies.

Clinton's schedule suggests that the Obama administration might be hedging its bets on Aso. She is scheduled to meet Tuesday with opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa, head of the Democratic Party of Japan; secretaries of state often meet with opposition leaders but have rarely done so in Japan.

Opinion polls suggest that Ozawa's party could knock Aso and his party out of power in an election that has to be called by September.

As for the substance of Clinton's talks with the Japanese government, she will sign an agreement Tuesday that will move 8,000 U.S. troops out of Japan to Guam, a transfer Japan is largely paying for. Other topics include the stalled negotiations over North Korea's nuclear program and climate change.

As a champion of the Kyoto treaty to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, Japan was quietly frustrated with the Bush administration's opposition to the treaty and to mandatory limits on emissions. Officials here say they expect to find common ground with the Obama administration.

With the collapse of Japanese car and electronic exports in recent months, this country is also looking for a new export stream to the United States, and the government believes it could be green technology. Since the oil shock of 1973-1974, experts say, no industrialized country has been more rigorous or effective than Japan in perfecting machinery and management systems to squeeze more economic growth out of less imported energy.

Relative to its economy, Japan consumes only a third as much oil as it did 35 years ago. "This is a possible way out of our economic hole," a Foreign Ministry official said.

By Glenn Kessler and Blaine Harden, The Washington Post, February 17, 2009

Coordinating Response to Economic Crisis at Top of Her Agenda

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a small group of Special Olympic athletes and two female Japanese astronauts that she chose Asia as her first foreign trip as secretary "to convey that America's relationship across the Pacific are indispensable to seizing the opportunities and addresing the challenges of the 21st century."

Not since the 1960s has a secretary of state put Asia first on the travel agenda. In addition to Japan, the secretary will make stops in Seoul, South Korea; Jakarta; Indonesia; and Beijing, during her weeklong trip.

Backdrop of Trip is "Global Economic Crisis"

On the 15-hour flight to Tokyo, Clinton made several trips to the back of the plane to speak with reporters. She said that the backdrop for the trip is the global economic crisis. Hours before Clinton's arrival, Japan announced that its gross domestic product had dropped at the annual pace of 12.7 percent, the steepest drop in 35 years. The secretary said that during her meetings with her foreign counterparts she would discuss the details of the U.S. stimulus package and see how "together we are going to approach these economic times."

Clinton told reporters that she has spoken to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner about a "comprehensive unified approach" and that the two are discussing a division of responsibilities.

Economy, North Korea High on Agenda

The economy may be high on the agenda, but North Korea will be a major topic as well. The secretary's visit comes in the midst of loud saber rattling from North Korea, which is again threatening war with its neighbor South Korea, while giving strong indications that it is preparing to test-fire a long-range missile. High-octane rhetoric is nothing new for North Korea, but South Korean and Japanese intelligence officials say a train carrying a long cylinder-shaped object has been spotted heading to a North Korean launch site.

Clinton issued a stark warning to North Korea before leaving for Asia: "It is incumbent on North Korea to avoid any provocative action and unhelpful rhetoric towards South Korea." But the secretary also did her part to lower the heat, saying that the Obama administration has "a great openness toward working" with North Korea and will be willing to normalize bilateral relations if it "completely and verifiably" eliminates its nuclear weapons program.

Six-party nuclear talks with North Korea were stalled after North Korea rejected verification requirements that can help prove it is halting its nuclear arms program. Clinton said en route to Tokyo that there is no doubt that North Korea now has nuclear weapons.

Clinton Yet to Announce Goals for China Trip

While in Japan, Clinton will sign the Guam International Agreement, which will move 8,000 U.S. troops from Okinawa to Guam, which is a U.S. territory.

She will also meet with families of kidnap victims taken decades ago by North Korea. The secretary said she has great sympathy and empathy for the families and will pressure North Korea to address the issue.

Clinton has yet to announce her goals during her trip to China. The secretary has announced that the United States and China will soon resume midlevel military-to-military talks, which were halted last year over a U.S. arms deal with Taiwan. She has also made clear that China needs to do more on climate change.

ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, en route to Asia on her inaugural foreign trip, struck a conciliatory tone toward North Korea on Sunday, saying the United States would have a "great openness" to the country if it gave up its nuclear ambitions.

"Our position is when they move forward in presenting a verifiable and complete dismantling and denuclearization, we have a great openness to working with them," Mrs. Clinton said on her plane heading to Tokyo, the first stop on a tour of Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China.

"It's not only on the diplomatic front," she said, adding that the United States had a "willingness to help the people of North Korea, not just in narrow ways with food and fuel but with energy assistance."

Mrs. Clinton's words did not represent a shift in United States policy, which is to offer the North Korean government economic aid and other incentives for abandoning its nuclear weapons program. But her tone was notably softer than previous pronouncements by American officials.

At the same time, she said the North Korean government needed to be more forthcoming about "the human tragedy" of Japanese citizens who had been abducted by the North in the 1970s and 1980s.

As Mrs. Clinton departed Washington, North Korea was casting a shadow over a voyage that sought to build solidarity between the United States and Asia on issues like the global economic crisis and climate change.

North Korea has engaged in bellicose talk toward the South, and there were reports on Sunday that the North was preparing to test a long-range missile.

Mrs. Clinton played down suspicions, long held by some in the Bush administration, that North Korea has a clandestine program to produce highly enriched uranium. What is not in dispute, she said, is that North Korea has plutonium, which it is using to manufacture nuclear weapons.

In China, Mrs. Clinton said, she would pursue a partnership on climate change. She suggested, though, that she did not intend to press Beijing to accept mandatory caps on carbon emissions, as President Obama supports.

She also praised the Chinese government for adopting a "robust" economic stimulus program. While she said she would raise human-rights concerns in Beijing, she does not plan to do so prominently.

Mrs. Clinton also said she would meet with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, in two weeks for what she said she hoped would be a "positive start." She said the administration had made no decisions on whether to scale back a missile defense system in Eastern Europe that has caused tension between Moscow and Washington.

Mrs. Clinton's choice of Japan for her first stop is heavily symbolic and meant to reassure the Japanese that they remain America's central allies in Asia. Japan looms large in efforts to recover from the global economic crisis and has pledged up to $100 billion in aid to the International Monetary Fund to help countries facing credit shortages because of the crisis.

By Mark Landler, The New York Times, February 15, 2009

Hillary Clinton arrives in Asia today on her maiden overseas trip as Secretary of State, with China at the heart of her agenda as the US seeks to tackle the global economic crisis, climate change and North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Traditionally, Mrs Clinton's predecessors have travelled first to Europe or the Middle East, but her focus on Asia reflects the region's growing influence and President Obama's desire to broaden ties with Beijing.

She will also visit Japan, Indonesia and South Korea on her seven-day tour, part of a long-term US strategy to deal with the shifting global power structures between West and East.

As a presidential candidate last year, Mrs Clinton wrote that "our relationship with China will be the most important bilateral relationship in the world this century".

At a speech in New York on Friday, she declared: "Some believe that China on the rise is, by definition, an adversary. To the contrary, we believe that the United States and China can benefit from and contribute to each other's successes.

"It is in our interests to work harder to build on areas of common concern and shared opportunities."

America's economic relationship with China is still the central issue - Beijing holds nearly $700 billion in US Treasury securities - but the Obama Administration wants China to be a central player on a range of other issues, particularly climate change.

In her speech last week, Mrs Clinton noted that China passed the US recently as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses, and invited Beijing to join America in a partnership to reduce global warming.

Travelling with her this week will be Todd Stern, her special envoy for climate change negotiations, underscoring the importance of the issue to the new Administration.

Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton believe that a sincere effort to engage China in reducing carbon emissions will improve chances of getting a deal in Copenhagen in December, where a new post-Kyoto treaty on climate change is due to be negotiated.

During her visit to Beijing Mrs Clinton will visit a clean thermal power plant built through a collaboration between General Electric and China.

China also chairs the stalled sixparty talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons programme. On this issue, the Obama Administration's policy is essentially the same as that left by President Bush: to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions through talks involving the US. The issue will be high on the agenda during Mrs Clinton's stops in Tokyo and Seoul, both part of the multilateral effort to confront the threat.

On Friday Mrs Clinton called Pyongyang's programme "the most acute challenge to stability in NorthEast Asia". She said that the US would normalise relations with Pyongyang if it "completely and verifiably" eliminated its weapons and programme.

Mrs Clinton visits Japan first, in part to allay concerns in Tokyo that the US's gaze has shifted from its strongest partner in the region toward Beijing. She will sign an agreement that will authorise the relocation of 8,000 US Marines stationed in Okinawa, whose presence has long angered the Japanese, to Guam. Under the deal Tokyo will pay for 60 per cent of the move but more than 15,000 Marines will remain. Last year the Bush Administration angered Japan by removing North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism without addressing Tokyo's concerns about the fate of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea. In an attempt to ease such concerns, Mrs Clinton will meet the families of some of the detainees. In Indonesia, where Mr Obama lived between the age of 6 and 10, Mrs Clinton will announce that she will attend a South-East Asian summit this summer, an event that the Bush Administration often skipped.

By Tim Reid, The Times, February 16, 2009

When Hillary Rodham Clinton visits China and other Asian nations this week in her first trip abroad as U.S. secretary of state, she will not just be breaking with the tradition that America's top diplomat visit Europe or the Middle East first.

She will also be signaling the new administration's determination to take a fresh - and less confrontational - approach to diplomacy in the region, making China and other Asian nations a higher diplomatic priority than the previous administration.

Not since Dean Rusk in the 1960s has a new secretary of state flown across the Pacific Ocean rather than the Atlantic on a first trip. Rusk was involved in diplomacy with Korea and Japan.

In her first major speech as secretary of state on Friday, Clinton sought to draw a clear line between the policies of Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. "There has been a general feeling that perhaps we didn't pay an appropriate amount of attention to Asia over the last years," she said at the Asia Society in New York on Friday, two days before she was scheduled to depart for her trip Sunday.

Clinton also called for "rigorous and persistent engagement" not just with China but also with Japan, Indonesia and South Korea, which are also on her itinerary.

Clinton's trip comes as North Korea revs up uneasiness in the region by threatening naval skirmishes with South Korea, a U.S. ally, and engaging in what analysts and officials in the region consider possible preparations to launch a ballistic missile designed to reach as far as Alaska.

Analysts in Seoul say that such moves from North Korea are intended to put pressure on President Lee Myung Bak of South Korea to reverse his hard-line policy and to resume shipping free aid to the impoverished North, while grabbing the attention of the Obama administration.

"We will develop relations with countries that treat us friendly," Kim Yong Nam, North Korea's No. 2 leader, said Sunday during a national meeting held as part of celebrations on the eve of the 67th birthday of the supreme leader, Kim Jong Il.

In recent months, North Korea has increased its rhetoric against Seoul, calling Lee a "pro-U.S. traitor," vowing an "all-out confrontational posture" and canceling all nonaggression agreements with the South. At the same time, it has held out an olive branch to Obama, voicing its willingness to engage in bilateral talks with Washington to extract economic and political concessions.

Kim Yong Nam, who serves as North Korea's ceremonial head of state, continued the North's oratory against Lee on Sunday, urging all Koreans to deal "an iron hammer blow to anti-unification forces in South Korea that are bringing the catastrophe of a nuclear war."

When Clinton meets with Lee and other South Korean leaders in Seoul later this week, they will discuss the difficult task of how to bring North Korea back to talks on ending its nuclear weapons programs while reversing the rapidly chilling relations between the two Koreas.

Meanwhile, in Japan, Clinton's first stop, her visit has been welcomed as a sign that the Obama administration will not neglect Tokyo, one of Washington's oldest allies in the region. There had been wide fears there that a Democratic White House could pass over Japan as it focused on more pressing issues like the war in Afghanistan or an economically ascendant Beijing.

Japan is also hoping to lobby Clinton into pressuring North Korea to account for Japanese citizens it reportedly abducted during the 1970s and 1980s, a highly emotional issue in Japan that the United States has viewed as a distraction to talks with the North about its nuclear program. Clinton has agreed to meet with families of abductees.

She will also meet Japan's leading opposition political leader, Ichiro Ozawa, whose party could win control of government in elections later this year but who seemed to feel neglected by the Bush administration.

Clinton intends to sign an agreement in Japan under which 8,000 U.S. marines now stationed in Okinawa will relocate to Guam and the Japanese government will commit to helping pay for further realignment of U.S. forces, The Associated Press reported from Washington, quoting officials.

Still, Clinton spoke mostly of China on Friday, signaling that she would take a new, more vigorous approach in relations with Beijing. She said she intended to break with the Bush White House, which viewed China more as a rival than a partner, declaring that the United States had nothing to fear from an economically ascendant Beijing.

Unlike the previous administration, which kept relations with Beijing fixed on narrow economic matters like exchange rates, Clinton said she would press Chinese leaders on delicate issues like human rights and climate change. She also took note of Tibet, saying that Tibetans had a right to practice their religion without persecution.

"Some believe that China on the rise is by definition an adversary," she said. "To the contrary, we believe the United States and China benefit from, and contribute to, each other's successes."

Climate change will figure high on Clinton's agenda in Beijing, where she said she would emphasize how the two countries must work together.

In one sign of a fresh start, Clinton said the United States and China would resume middle-level exchanges between their militaries, which China suspended because of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

By Martin Fackler, Choe Sang-Hun and Mark Landler, International Herald Tribune, February 15,2009