Washington - President Obama gave center stage at his White House to Secretary of State Clinton Wednesday in the high-stakes U.S. effort to get Afghanistan and Pakistan on the same page in fighting the Taliban.

"They face this common threat, and they have to make common cause to reach a common objective," Clinton said in a surprise star turn from the White House press room.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs introduced Clinton as his "special guest," and Clinton noted the irony of speaking from a platform she shunned as First Lady, and later sought to win for herself in the 2008 campaign.

"You know, I successfully avoided this room for eight years," Clinton joked after leading three-way talks with Presidents Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan.

Clinton, and later Obama, outlined a new strategy breaking from the Bush administration's policy that treated Afghanistan and Pakistan separately.

Obama said the U.S., Pakistan and Afghanistan were now "three sovereign nations joined by a common goal - to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its extremist allies [the Taliban] in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their ability to operate in either country in the future."

"We must deny them the space to threaten the Pakistani, Afghan, or American people," Obama said after hosting Zardari and Karzai at the White House.

Clinton said Pakistan's military offensive this week against the Taliban in the northwestern Swat Valley was a positive sign.

"I'm actually quite impressed by the actions the Pakistani government is now taking," she said.

Earlier, Clinton presided in a full-blown Foggy Bottom ceremony to sign agreements aimed at putting in effect decades-old trade and transit pacts between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In the elegance of the State Department's Benjamin Franklin room, Clinton surrounded Karzai and Zardari with administration superstars such as Gen, David Petraeus and the heads of the FBI and the CIA to stress the urgency of meeting the terror threat.

Zardari pledged that the latest attack on the Taliban will succeed where others failed.

"The terrorists will be defeated by our joint struggle," Zardari said. "This is a cancer, it needs to be done away with" and "Pakistan is up to the challenge."

Clinton told Karzai the U.S. "deeply, deeply regretted" civilian deaths that may have been caused by U.S. airstrikes this week, but the U.S. military later said the casualties may have been inflicted by the Taliban.

By Kenneth R. Bazinet and Richard Sisk, New York DAILY NEWS, May 6th 2009

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday met the wife of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who went missing in March 2007 on an Iranian island in the Gulf.

Clinton "wanted to have this meeting so that she could express her concerns about the lack of information coming out of Iran with regard to Bob Levinson," said Robert Wood, a State Department spokesman.

"This case is obviously a very heart-wrenching humanitarian one," said Wood.

"We continue to call on Iran to provide information about Mr Levinson. It has not been forthcoming, and we're going to continue to press this issue."

Christine Levinson says her husband, who retired from the FBI a decade ago, had traveled to Kish island to investigate cigarette counterfeiting in the region and was last heard of on March 8, 2007.

The mystery of Levinson's disappearance is a further strain in relations between the United States and Iran, which remain tense over Iran's nuclear drive and the fate of US-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi, 32, jailed on espionage charges.

Senior US officials who met with Iranian representatives on the sidelines of a conference on rebuilding Afghanistan on March 31 handed them a letter from Clinton concerning the fate of Levinson and Saberi.

"In the letter, we ask Iran to use all of its facilities to determine the whereabouts, and ensure the quick and safe return of Robert Levinson" and release Roxana Saberi, while giving her and US-based academic Esha Momeni permission to travel, Clinton said at the time.

Saberi, 32, was sentenced to eight years in jail after being convicted of spying for Washington. She has been on hunger strike since April 21 in protest at the sentence and was briefly hospitalized on Friday, according to her family.

Saberi's fate remains an issue "of great concern" to Washington, Wood said Tuesday.

"We're worried about her health," he said.

Washington and Tehran broke off diplomatic ties in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

AFP, May 5, 2009

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States are meeting "as three sovereign nations joined by a common goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat" al Qaeda and the Taliban.

To do so, Obama said, the three nations have to deny extremists space to operate and bring a better life to the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Obama, in remarks delivered with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari at the White House, said the security of Afghanistan, of Pakistan and of the United States are linked.

Al Qaeda and its allies are responsible for killing innocent civilians and challenging the democratically elected governments in the nations, Obama said.

The United States has made a "lasting commitment [that it] will not waiver" in efforts to defeat extremists and support the Afghan and Pakistani governments, he said.

Obama's remarks came after a day of talks with Karzai and Zardari designed to help forge a more coordinated strategy against the resurgent extremists.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held talks with the Afghan and Pakistani leaders earlier in the day. The talks were attended by the foreign, defense, intelligence and agriculture ministers from both countries and a number of heavyweights in the Obama administration, including U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke, Gen. David Petraeus, CIA Director Leon Panetta, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

The diverse group, Clinton said, reflects the fact that "promoting peace must be an all-government effort."

The meetings are a continuation of a trilateral process started by Clinton in February, when she invited the foreign ministers of both countries to discuss Obama's strategy for stabilizing the region.

In addition to sending 21,000 more troops and trainers to Afghanistan, Obama has committed a surge in U.S. civilian personnel and aid to boost domestic support for both leaders, both considered weak and unpopular back home.

By having the leaders meet with Obama, the United States hopes to enlist them as full partners working with the United States in a regional alliance to combat terrorism.

Clinton said the talks will address "concrete initiatives" on improving security, boosting economic development and trade and increasing opportunities for both populations.

"I like to know specifically what we're going to try to do together," she said. "I like us to reach agreement on that. And then to specify the steps we will take together to achieve our common goals. I think that helps to eliminate the confusion that comes with distance and misunderstanding."

Clinton said she "deeply regretted" the killing of Afghan civilians during a U.S. airstrike Tuesday in western Afghanistan and pledged to both leaders the United States "will work very hard with your governments and with your leaders to avoid the loss of innocent civilian lives."

Karzai thanked her for her comment and said he hopes the two countries can work together to avoid civilian casualties "as we move ahead in our war on terrorism."

The U.S. military's preliminary investigation into the airstrike, however, found that as many as 15 Afghan civilians believed to be killed in the strike were actually killed when Taliban militants attacked them with hand grenades, according to a senior U.S. military official.

The militants then paraded the civilians' bodies through villages, claiming the deaths were the result of the airstrike, the official added.

The talks come amid growing U.S. frustration with the lack of progress by both countries in fighting extremists.

In particular, the Obama administration has voiced increased concern about recent Taliban and al Qaeda gains across much of southern Afghanistan and in Pakistan.

The U.S. military has carried out air strikes against militant targets in Pakistan, after Zardari's government was criticized for not cracking down on militants along the Afghan border. The unmanned drone attacks have rankled relations between Pakistan and Washington.

Pakistan's government recently signed a deal that would allow Islamic law, or sharia, in the Swat Valley, in exchange for an end to fighting. The government began a military offensive after Taliban militants moved into the Buner district and refused to disarm in violation of the agreement.

Last week, Obama said Pakistan's government appears to be "very fragile" and argued that the United States has "huge national security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable" and doesn't end up a "nuclear-armed militant state."

The United States has also accused Karzai's government in Afghanistan of being ineffective and corrupt. Karzai further angered the United States this week when he named Mohammad Qasim Fahim, a powerful warlord accused of violating human rights, as a vice-presidential running mate, despite warnings from Clinton that Fahim would be a polarizing choice.

"We are not perfect," Clinton told the leaders. "No human being is. We will make mistakes, but we need to have the kind of open dialogue, where we express our concerns about those mistakes."

Zardari and Karzai pledged to work together with the United States to combat extremists and stabilize their two countries.

"While we will need high level of support in days to come, we will also be far more transparent in our actions," Zardari told the group. "Here, me, my friend, President Karzai, and the United States assure the world, that we will stand shoulder to shoulder with the world to fight this cancer and this threat."

Pakistani democracy, he added, will defeat terrorism and "avenge the death" of his wife, slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in late 2007.

Clinton called Bhutto an "extraordinary leader" and acknowledged the couple's young son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who attended the talks. He is the chairman of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party and heir apparent to the Bhutto dynasty.

Calling the United States his country's "most valued" strategic ally," Karzai said, "I'm certain, through the implementation of the strategy outlined earlier by President Obama, will bring us the needed relief towards better, more peaceful life in both of our countries."

He promised Afghanistan will work hard to "do the right thing" to build confidence and trust with Pakistan to "wage a more effective struggle against the menace of terrorism and the violence that radicalism causes both in Pakistan and in Afghanistan and the danger that they pose to you in America and the rest of the world."

The two leaders signed a trade and transit agreement aimed at increasing commerce and foreign investment in the two countries and will be visiting key congressional leaders and policymakers about U.S. efforts to boost both countries' economies.

A bill called the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009, introduced by Sens. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, and Dick Lugar, R-Indiana, would authorize $7.5 billion in non-military aid to Pakistan over the next five years to foster economic growth and development, and another $7.5 billion for the following five years.





CNN, May 7, 2009

TAKHT BAI, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan launched air and ground attacks against up to 7,000 Taliban militants entrenched in a northwestern valley Wednesday, killing dozens holed up at emerald mines and on forested hillsides following urgent U.S. demands to step up the fight against the insurgents.

With militants fighting back and weary refugees lining up at camps, the operation will be a test of whether the army has the will, capability and political support to defeat an enemy that had three months under a now-shattered peace deal to rest and regroup.

"It is an all-out war there. Rockets are landing everywhere," said Laiq Zada, 33, who fled the Swat Valley and is living in a government-run tent camp out of the danger zone. "We have with us the clothes on our bodies and a hope in the house of God. Nothing else."

Washington has said it wants to see a sustained operation in Swat and surrounding districts, mindful of earlier, inconclusive offensives elsewhere in the Afghan border region. Eight years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the area remains a haven for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters blamed for spiraling violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Uprooting the insurgents from the valley will mean unpopular civilian casualties, property damage and massive disruption to public life. That combination could tear at the resolve of government, which is struggling to convince the nuclear-armed Muslim nation that fighting the militants is in its interests as well as those of the U.S.

But there have been signs recently of a shift in the national mood against the Taliban after it got most of the blame for the collapsed peace process in Swat. A series of bloody terrorist attacks in the country's heartland province, Punjab, and the wide broadcast last month of a video clip showing the insurgents beating a women in Swat, also appear to have hardened the stance of politicians, clerics and ordinary Pakistanis toward extremists.

"Finally, it seems the authorities have realized the intensity of the threat and the mortality of danger," said Ishtiaq Ahmad, professor of international relations at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. "That is why we can expect the military to be a little more courageous and resolute this time."

Wednesday's clashes followed the collapse of a three-month-old truce in Swat that saw the government impose Islamic law. It was widely criticized in the West as a surrender to the militants, who had fought the army to a standstill in two years of clashes that saw hundreds of civilian casualties.

The fighting came hours ahead of meetings between President Barack Obama and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in Washington to explore ways to boost the country's anti-terror fight, seen by many as the most pressing foreign policy issue facing the administration.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the military offensive against the Taliban was a positive sign.

"I'm actually quite impressed by the actions the Pakistani government is now taking," she said. "I think that action was called for and action has been forthcoming."

Swat is seen as an especially significant battleground. Rather than a remote badlands along the Afghan border, it is only 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad, and is a relatively wealthy former tourist resort famed for its striking mountain views.

The accord there began unraveling last month when Taliban fighters moved from the valley into the nearby district of Buner, even closer to Islamabad, prompting a military operation that the military says has killed more than 150 militants. It is unclear how many remain in that district, but the army says the operation is "progressing smoothly."

The militants, who never laid down their weapons, resumed armed patrols in the main town of Mingora on Sunday and occupied public buildings, attacked security forces and blew up police stations, effectively ending the deal, according to officials and witnesses.

Sustained fighting broke out Tuesday, triggering a mass exodus from the town. Up to 40,000 people have fled the region, according to officials, who have warned that 500,000 could leave. Half a million out of a peacetime population of 1.5 million already fled two earlier army offensives and a Taliban reign of terror.

The United Nations said it was preparing six camps, but that most of those who had fled were living with relatives.

Witnesses said Mingora's streets were largely deserted, with people too scared to leave their homes, as helicopters and mortar crews pounded militant positions in the town and outlying districts.

The military said about 35 militants positioned near emerald mines and in hillside bases above the town were killed - the most reported casualties there since fighting resumed. It reported another 50 enemy fighters killed in Buner in artillery strikes and clashes.

The Swat militants had moved down from the hills into Mingora and were occupying public buildings, robbing banks and planting bombs to hinder any army advance, according to a statement. Four soldiers were killed in a bomb attack and an assault on a power plant, it said.

The militant casualty figures could not be verified independently, and there was no official word on deaths or injuries among civilians.

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas declined to say whether the events heralded the start of major, sustained offensive, adding only that "all the contingency plans are worked out" for carrying one out.

An Associated Press reporter saw a long column of army trucks carrying heavy artillery pieces on the main highway that leads to the northwest late Wednesday. However, it was not clear whether the army was planning to send significant reinforcements to the valley.

The Swat Taliban are estimated to have up to 7,000 fighters - many with training and battle experience - equipped with rocket-propelled grenades, explosives and automatic weapons. They are up against some 15,000 troops who until recent days had been confined to their barracks under the peace deal.

The military has fought about a dozen operations in the border region since 9/11, killing scores of militants and sustaining more than 1,500 casualties - something it says proves it is serious about cracking down on the insurgency.

But many have doubts about its commitment, chiefly because it previously cultivated ties to militants to use as proxy fighters in Afghanistan and Kashmir, a territory disputed with rival India.

By ZARAR KHAN and CHRIS BRUMMITT , The Associated Press, May 6, 2009

Estimates of the number of people killed by U.S. airstrikes in western Afghanistan rise as high as 100. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the U.S. 'deeply regrets' the loss of life.

Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross also traveled to the area, and a spokeswoman in Kabul, Jessica Barry, said Wednesday that there was little doubt that dozens of those killed in two locations were noncombatants. Many of the bodies seen being pulled from the rubble were those of women, children and elderly men, she said.

Provincial authorities said they believed about two dozen insurgents were also killed in the fighting, but a Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, insisted that all the dead were civilians. Contacted by telephone, he said Western forces should pay reparations to the families of the dead.

Western military officials say insurgents often try to pass off their own battlefield dead as civilians in order to inflame sentiment against the government and coalition troops, but they have not yet leveled such an accusation in this case.

The American military, while confirming heavy fighting in the area at the time of the deaths, refused to identify the units involved. U.S. Marines are deployed in the area, along with Afghan police and soldiers, and news reports said American special forces were involved in the airstrikes.

Accurate casualty counts are extremely difficult to obtain in such instances, because bodies are usually buried swiftly, in keeping with Muslim tradition. Also, local record-keeping of family sizes and village populations tends to be sketchy. But villagers, aware that their claims might be received with skepticism, brought about two dozen bodies to the city of Farah, the district capital, telling authorities that many more remained at the scene. They also made cellphone videos of rows of corpses, which were being widely circulated Wednesday.

The province's governor, Rohul Amin, and police chief, Abdul Ghafar Watandar, said the death toll could reach 100. Villagers said many of the dead were from several extended families. Those killed included a medical volunteer for Afghanistan's Red Crescent, the Red Cross said on its website.

Accounts differed as to whether the villagers voluntarily took shelter in several walled compounds or were forced by Taliban fighters to congregate there. The insurgents have been accused of using civilians as human shields.

Karzai has repeatedly decried civilian deaths and injuries that occur during confrontations between Western forces and insurgents. Coalition commanders have altered some battlefield rules in response, and say they take all possible precautions to avoid harming noncombatants.

Western officials also point out, in frustration, that insurgents often target civilians in suicide bombings and other attacks, and also deliberately place them in harm's way during fighting.




By Laura King, Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2009

Economic crises come and go, but entitlements are forever. The Great Depression eventually dissipated, but Franklin Roosevelt's crown jewel - the Social Security system - is still with us. And so it will be with the Obama Administration. The early headlines have been all about the President's efforts to repair the financial system and jump-start the economy. If he succeeds, he probably will be re-elected. But Barack Obama's place in history will be determined by the long-term structural changes he initiates, and his most important legacy battle is just beginning as Congress tackles the holy grail of modern liberalism, a universal health-care system.

The President has been clever about this. He hasn't made it the centerpiece of his Administration - and a fat target for his opponents - as Bill Clinton did. He hasn't proposed a specific plan, allowing, instead, a proposal to percolate through the Congress. "Everything about this process seems the polar opposite of 15 years ago," says John Rother of AARP. "The Administration seems determined not to make the same mistakes as Clinton did."

Indeed, Democrats have a history of strategic idiocy when it comes to health care. Nearly 40 years ago, Richard Nixon proposed a universal system in which employers would be required to pay for their employees' coverage, but Democrats blocked it because they favored a government-run single-payer system. Twenty years later, Bill and Hillary Clinton proposed a system similar to Nixon's - but failed to bring aboard moderate Republicans, who favored a universal system based on requiring individuals rather than employers to participate. In the 2008 campaign, Obama and Hillary Clinton proposed plans that looked very much like the 1993 Republican scheme - do you detect a pattern here? - and the congressional debate, which will take place this summer, begins there.

This time, with significant Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, there is real optimism that a universal plan will be passed and enacted. But Clinton also had Democratic majorities - and strong public approval, at first. This time, because of the rules agreed on in the arcane budget process, Democrats will need only a simple majority vote in the Senate. But the process could run into the same two roadblocks that caused universal health insurance to fail in the past: the specter of "socialized medicine" and the fear that the cost of the program will, like that of other entitlements, spiral out of control.

In the 2008 campaign, Obama and Clinton worked overtime to assure voters that if they liked their current health-care coverage, they could keep it - that is, the system would remain a private one, presided over by a more strictly regulated insurance industry. And in the months since the election, the insurers have indicated that they will play ball: they've said they will cover everyone, at the same rate, regardless of pre-existing condition. (There are caveats: the details of health insurance are devilish, and pitched battles are fought over arcana too obscure to cover in this space.) But more-liberal Democrats have decided to press the issue. They have proposed a "public" health-insurance option, similar to Medicare. They argue, correctly, that the profits made by insurance companies are a good part of what makes health care so expensive in the U.S. and that a public option is needed to keep the insurers honest. Needless to say, the insurers are vehemently opposed to this and will unleash a torrent of negative advertising and lobbying power if the final bill includes it.

The President recently told a remarkable story about his grandmother. In the last months of her life - she was dying of cancer - she broke her hip and received a hip replacement from Medicare. "I don't know how much that hip replacement cost," Obama told the New York Times, and he questioned whether giving people "a hip replacement when they're terminally ill is a sustainable model." This is the most sensitive health-care issue imaginable. But the question of whether the government can decide which health-care treatments are appropriate is central to whether an affordable universal system can be devised. Part of the answer is implicit in the electronic medical-records system that Obama has proposed: it will be easier to determine which treatments are cheaper and more effective. The other part of the answer involves an essential change in Medicare, from fee-for-service to a managed-care system that decides whether a hip replacement is necessary for a terminal cancer patient. Since most of the baby boomers about to enter the Medicare system have been living with managed care for the past 20 years, a gradual transition may not be impossible.

My guess is that the public option is a bargaining chip that will be cashed in to gain support from moderate Republicans and Democrats as crunch time approaches. The real battle, and the fate of this liberal dream, will be fought over what gets covered and who decides.

By Joe Klein, Time, May 07, 2009

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she hopes the June trial date set for two American journalists held by North Korea is a sign they may soon be released. The two young women journalists have been detained since mid-March.

The Obama administration has been pursuing quiet diplomacy on behalf of the two journalists and Clinton says the fact a trial date has been set may be a sign that a process leading to their release is underway.

American reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling were arrested along the border between North Korea and China March 17 as they were working on a story about North Korean refugees in China for a San Francisco-based U.S. broadcaster.

North Korean media reports have said they are accused of so-called hostile acts and illegally entering the country, and Pyongyang announced Thursday they would stand trial June 4.

At a press appearance with Malaysia's foreign minister, Clinton cast the announcement as, potentially, good news.

"Actually the trial date being set we view as a welcome time frame," said Hillary Clinton. "We believe that the charges are baseless and should not have been brought, and that these two young women should be released immediately. But the fact that they are going to have some process we believe is a signal that there can be, and I hope will be, a resolution as soon as possible."

Clinton's comment came just a few days after Iran released an Iranian-American journalist it had held for three months. Roxana Saberi had been convicted of spy charges and sentenced to eight years in prison, but an Iranian appeals court suspended the sentence and she was freed.

The Secretary of State also sounded a conciliatory note on the issue of North Korea's nuclear program, saying the door is open to Pyongyang's return to Chinese-sponsored six-party negotiations which North Korea quit last month after United Nations criticism of its long-range missile firing.

However Clinton said North Korea should not expect better terms in the negotiations.

"The ball is in the North Korean court," she said. "And we are not concerned about chasing after North Korea, about offering concessions to North Korea. They know what their obligations are. They know what the process is, and we are all urging that they return and begin once again to act with us to move the agenda forward."

Clinton said a recent mission to the region by U.S. envoy on North Korea Stephen Bosworth showed that other parties to the talks - Japan, South Korea, Russia and host China -agree with Washington on a patient approach toward Pyongyang.

North Korea agreed in principle in 2007 to scrap its nuclear program including weapons in return for aid and diplomatic benefits. But talks stalled over the reclusive communist state's refusal to accept a verification plan for the declaration of its nuclear holdings and activities it made last June.




By David Gollust, Voice of America, May 14, 2009

The Democratic primary for the Virginia gubernatorial nomination is being haunted by one of the most contentious primary battles in history - the 2008 fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

For former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe (D), former state Rep. Brian Moran (D) and state Sen. Creigh Deeds (D), the race to replace outgoing Gov. Tim Kaine (D) offers the opportunity to associate themselves with the presidential candidates of their choice, as well as the chance to borrow a page from either candidate's playbook.

The winner of the June 9 primary will move on to face Bob McDonnell (R), who was the state's attorney general until he resigned earlier this year to focus on the governor's race.

Moran, brother of Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), has been the most visible in his efforts to associate himself with Obama, whom he endorsed during the presidential primaries. Moran released a radio spot lauding Obama's first 100 days in office and his campaign makes a point to tout the number of Obama delegates and grassroots volunteers who back him.

"Brian Moran would never claim to inherit Obama's mantle, but there are similarities in terms of their commitment to public service," said Jesse Ferguson, a Moran spokesman.

McAuliffe, meanwhile, would seem to have a harder time associating himself with the first Democrat to win the commonwealth's electoral votes since 1964. McAuliffe was chairman of Clinton's campaign, and though he held 30 events for Obama in Virginia, Moran has attacked him for being associated with the infamous advertisement in which Clinton questioned Obama's ability to handle a 3 a.m. phone call.

Plus McAuliffe has taken advantage of his close relationship with former President Bill Clinton and much of his team. The ex-president has campaigned several times with McAuliffe in Virginia - he will make another two-day swing through the state on May 13 and 14 - and old allies like James Carville have signed solicitations for McAuliffe's e-mail list.

"As a former governor and a good friend of Terry's, we think [Clinton] can speak to Terry's experience creating jobs," said Elisabeth Smith, McAuliffe's spokeswoman. And far from choosing the Clintons over Obama, she added, "No one in this race fought harder than Terry did to get Barack Obama elected."

"Moran would like to frame [the race] as a choice between Clinton's guy and Obama's guy," said Bob Holsworth, a political scientist formerly with Virginia Commonwealth University who now runs the Virginia Tomorrow blog. But, he said, "McAuliffe has Clinton. It's not certain at all that Moran has Obama. That's the challenge of the Moran campaign: He's trying to mimic the Obama campaign."

Neither Obama nor Clinton will be endorsing a candidate or campaigning for anyone in the primary.

Ironically, while Moran pursues the Obama mantle of outsider bent on change, observers say McAuliffe's campaign depends more on recreating what Obama was able to do, while Moran would benefit from a more Clinton-esque strategy.

"While McAuliffe is clearly tied to Clinton and the elected officials Moran is tied to are Obama supporters, the two campaigns are actually using each other's playbook," said Michael McDonald, a George Mason University political scientist.

Moran "is relying a lot on endorsements from local officials," Holsworth said. Like Clinton, Moran would benefit from a low-turnout primary heavy on party loyalists who would rather support a lifelong Virginian than someone who might be painted as a carpetbagger.

"They hope it's a kind of the friends-and-neighbors primary," Holsworth said of Moran's campaign.

But McAuliffe is using his massive war chest to hire more staff bent on driving up turnout, a strategy that Obama used successfully in the Iowa caucuses and other contests.

"If McAuliffe is able to expand the electorate using Obama's playbook, he may be able to draw in people who aren't as tied to the local party machine, like Obama did," McDonald said.

Caught in the middle of the two seeming front-runners, Deeds has the opportunity to exploit an overlooked portion of the Democratic electorate, and to either walk away with the surprising win or play the role of king-making spoiler.

Deeds sat out the 2008 presidential primary. And as the clear underdog in the race, that could serve him well. McAuliffe and Moran have engaged each other a few times - most notably with Moran going after McAuliffe in recent debates - but Deeds has tried to stay above the fray.

Both front-runners are campaigning throughout the state, but they are competing especially hard in Northern Virginia, where a large percentage of the Democratic electorate is based. Deeds's base, on the other hand, is in more rural areas of Virginia along the Appalachian Mountains.

Deeds has refrained from attacking his opponents, and he has not engaged in some of the typical stops Virginia politicians make. Most notably, his two opponents put on shows of force at the Shad Planking, a major political get-together held in late April, but Deeds opted to spend the day campaigning.

"There's a little skepticism about Creigh Deeds's ability to win in a general election," McDonald said. But, he added: "He's going to hope that [McAuliffe and Moran] destroy each other and he'll be viewed as the acceptable alternative."




By Reid Wilson, The Hill, May 5, 2009

Today's announcement by former Florida state House Speaker Marco Rubio that he will challenge Gov. Charlie Crist in a Republican primary for the state's open Senate seat in 2010 -- if, as expected, Crist jumps into the race -- sets up the latest in a series of terrific primaries on tap for next year.

Not only are there great intraparty squabbles already set in Senate races in Florida, Connecticut, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio and Texas but there are also a few potentially marquee contests on the horizon including in Pennsylvania where Sen. Arlen Specter (D) could face a challenge from Rep. Joe Sestak and/or former National Constitution Center head Joe Torsella while former Rep. Pat Toomey and former Gov. Tom Ridge might square off on the Republican side.

At the gubernatorial level, there are scads of great primaries ranging from the battle between Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison to the likely scrap between New York Gov. David Paterson (D) and state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

The Fix has made clear our feelings about primaries: we love them!

But, for today's Wag the Blog question we want your opinion on whether primaries are generally a good thing or a bad thing for the two parties.

Evidence can be cited on both sides of the argument.

It's hard to question that the prolonged battle between then Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton strengthened Democrats' hands -- from a media, messaging and voter registration perspective -- for last fall's campaign.

But, it's equally difficult to argue that Sen. Ted Kennedy's (Mass.) challenge to then President Jimmy Carter in 1980 didn't significantly weaken Carter for the general election race against Ronald Reagan.

Which side of the argument do you buy into? Do primaries -- in the main -- allow the best candidate with the most compelling message to rise to the top? Or are they typically bloody and expensive contests that distract from the general elections where there are real differences between the candidates?

Offer your thoughts in the comments section below. As always, the most insightful comments will be featured later this week in their own post.

By Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post, May 5, 2009

WASHINGTON - When President Obama announced his new strategy in March for dealing with the problems of Afghanistan and Pakistan, he declared that America's once-grandiose goals in the region should be narrowed to taking aim at Al Qaeda. To get the job done, he was already sending upwards of 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, and he promised to pour billions of dollars in aid into development programs in the region.

There was only one hitch: Al Qaeda doesn't really live in Afghanistan. It survives largely over the border in Pakistan, where American boots on the ground will never be tolerated. "This is the logical flaw in an otherwise pretty sophisticated plan," one of the participants in the White House debate said at the time. "We have to stabilize Afghanistan. But if the goal is to take out Al Qaeda and its friends, we're putting our troops in the wrong country."

But only five weeks later, what seemed like a fissure in the plan - a fissure Mr. Obama himself discussed and fully understood, his aides say - has opened into a canyon. As Mr. Obama prepares to meet at the White House on Wednesday with President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, the agenda has been overwhelmed by the drive that insurgents inside Pakistan are mounting for control of swaths of the country.

The original intention for the meeting was to find ways to accomplish something the Pakistanis and the Afghans have never been able to engineer, no matter how hard Washington has pushed them to: A coordinated military effort to squeeze the Taliban and other insurgents on both sides of their long, wild border. Suddenly, that seems like the lesser of two urgent problems.

"The possibility is now real that we will see a jihadist state emerge in Pakistan - not an inevitable outcome, not even the most likely, but a real possibility," said Bruce Riedel, the Brookings Institution scholar who served as the co-author of Mr. Obama's review.

"And that is the real strategic nightmare for the United States," he added.

Important as Afghanistan is to the United States, he said, the events of the past few weeks focused American minds on Pakistan's uniquely toxic cocktail.

"It's where the far greater strategic risks lie," said Mr. Riedel, a former intelligence officer who has long navigated the dangerous currents of South Asia. "It has more terrorists per square mile than anyplace else on earth, and it has a nuclear weapons program that is growing faster than anyplace else on earth."

Or, as Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it on Monday, "this isn't about 'can do' any more; this is about 'must do.' "

So in the land of no good options, what are some of the possibilities that Mr. Obama can explore? What can he accomplish sitting down with a weak Pakistani leader who spent years dodging charges of corruption, and whose early support in Washington has quickly soured? Or with an even weaker Afghan leader who was once a favorite of the United States - both for his elegance and for his eloquence - but who many in the Obama administration would now like to see eased out of office in the coming election?

Here are a few possibilities to watch for:

Speed Up Plan A The core of Mr. Obama's strategy was to bet on a long-term solution: Retraining the Pakistani military to become an effective counterinsurgency force and pour billions of dollars and plenty of manpower into real nation-building efforts on both sides of the border, but particularly in the tribal areas that have become Al Qaeda and Taliban strongholds - in short, to execute the Marshall Plan for the region that President George W. Bush first talked about in March 2002 but never executed.

According to administration officials, Mr. Obama is expected to promise to unlock nearly $1 billion in aid that the United States has promised but not yet delivered, and to announce a new training program for Pakistani soldiers, probably located in Kuwait so that American trainers need not set foot on Pakistani soil. But building schools and training soldiers takes time. And with the Taliban expansion threatening the country's main East-West highway - the highway that leads to Islamabad - it is not clear that the long-term approach will address the immediate military emergency.

Step up Predator Attacks and Covert Ground Action Last summer Mr. Bush approved a covert plan allowing United States forces, for the first time, to use remotely piloted aircraft to attack not only Al Qaeda sites, but other insurgents that threaten either Afghanistan or Pakistan. President Obama continued that policy, but every proposed strike by the Predator drones has posed a awful choice: How do you blow up a house that has suspected terrorists in the basement if it also has seven-year-olds and their mothers in the living room? The popular anger in Pakistan about the drones has reached a fever pitch.

Mr. Obama's aides have debated inviting the Pakistanis to participate in the C.I.A.'s Predator program, actively managing the missions rather than just permitting them to be mounted from a not-so-secret base on Pakistani territory. But many in the administration are hesitant, because past joint operations with Pakistan's military and intelligence services have rarely worked.

"The question is whether the Taliban's boldness has scared the Pakistanis enough to realize that they need our help," one national security official involved in the debate said. "We don't know the answer to that."

There is similar concern about sending American special forces on missions deeper into Pakistan, for fear of the political reaction if they are discovered operating inside Pakistan's borders. (One of Mr. Bush's aides put this problem pithily last summer when he asked, "How do you invade an ally?")

Make Nuclear Arms the No. 1 Concern: In public, the administration says that no matter what inroads the Taliban make in Pakistan, the country's nuclear arsenal is secure. "The Pakistani leadership and in particular the military is very focused on this," Admiral Mullen said on Monday.

But when not speaking on the record, intelligence and administration officials say they cannot rely on vague assurances that the weapons and the nuclear materials are locked down. They worry about a stream of intelligence suggesting sophisticated efforts by Al Qaeda and others to place their sympathizers inside the nuclear infrastructure. (Pakistani officials say they extensively screen the thousands of nuclear workers and weed out anyone suspect. But even in the United States, such programs have failed in the past.)

So some officials argue for extending the American program to help secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons, pressing Pakistan to develop joint plans to evacuate those weapons if they came under threat. It is doubtful that the Pakistanis, who fear the United States has secret plans to seize the arsenal, would ever agree.

The bluntest statement of concern to date came a week ago from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in an interview with James Rosen of Fox News. "If the worst, the unthinkable, were to happen, and this advancing Taliban, encouraged and supported by Al Qaeda and other extremists, were to essentially topple the government for failure to beat them back, then they would have the keys to the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan," she said.

"We can't even contemplate that," she added. "We cannot let this go on any further, which is why we're pushing so hard for the Pakistanis to come together around a strategy to take their country back."




By David E. Sanger, The New York Times, May 5, 2009

A year ago today, with returns rolling in from the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, the late Tim Russert so famously declared, "We now know who the Democratic nominee will be, and nobody is going to dispute it."

Russert was right, but Hillary Clinton, nevertheless, kept campaigning for several more weeks, fueled by her supporters' convictions that her proposals were better than Obama's.

After barely 100 days in office, it now appears Obama agrees: Since taking office, he has dropped virtually every position that distinguished him from Clinton.

Granted, there were not many policy differences between Obama and Clinton during the campaign. But those that existed were sharply debated and helped Obama define himself as the pragmatic change agent that many voters now believe him to be.

Take Iraq. Obama never missed an opportunity on the campaign trail to remind Democrats that he was the sole candidate to oppose the war in 2002, and - unlike Clinton - he had a hard date for ending the war. Clinton repeatedly questioned the wisdom and sincerity of Obama's pledge to remove all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. It was the biggest difference between the two candidates - and one of the top reasons Obama won the nomination.

Yet just weeks after entering office, Obama largely dropped his campaign plan. Rather than withdraw all combat troops on a set timeline, Obama opted for a conditions-based withdrawal that will leave as many as 50,000 troops in the war zone at the end of 2011 - exactly the sort of drawdown he maligned Clinton for proposing.

Health care is another example. While Obama was outflanking Clinton on the left on Iraq, she made up for it by criticizing his health care plan as inadequate. Both candidates claimed to support universal health care, but only Clinton's plan included a government mandate that would force all Americans to have health insurance.

Primary voters will recall Clinton and Obama endlessly debating this, with Clinton accusing Obama of leaving about 15 million people without health care and Obama warning voters that Clinton's plan would require "harsh, stiff penalties on those who don't purchase it."

Just as with Iraq, Obama is now moving toward Clinton's position. His budget outline proposes a health care plan that "must put the United States on a clear path to cover all Americans." That strongly suggests a mandate, since any volunteer system would see some opting out. As Ezra Klein reported in The American Prospect when the administration's health care plan began to leak out, "Despite the controversy over the individual mandate in the campaign, [Obama's team] will support it."

Some of the most significant differences between Clinton and Obama focused on governing. One of Obama's first breakthrough moments was at the YearlyKos convention in August 2007, when Clinton defended her relationships with lobbyists, saying "a lot of those lobbyists, whether you like it not, represent real Americans." Drawing a sharp contrast, Obama promised to ban anyone who had recently worked as a lobbyist from serving in his administration.

But that promise was broken even before he took office, when the president-elect chose several lobbyists for high-level posts, including deputy secretaries at the Defense and Health and Human Services departments. (Ironically, Obama even nominated a lobbyist to be an assistant secretary of state under Clinton.)

Obama's campaign also made Clinton's partisanship an issue. In a thinly veiled reference to Clinton's poor standing among Republicans, his stump speech included overt pleas for Republican support. Presenting himself as a post-partisan leader, he promised to forge a new era of bipartisanship in Washington.

As Obama confessed at his prime-time press conference last week, he's fallen short on that front, too. Since taking office, the president's agenda has been demonstrably partisan; nearly every bill he has so far signed into law passed Congress on a party-line vote. If Clinton were sitting in the Oval Office instead of Obama, it's hard to imagine how Washington would be any more partisan.

Clinton lost the battle for the Democratic nomination, but a year later, it appears her campaign has won the war of ideas within the Democratic Party.




By Alex Conant, Politico, May 6, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the Obama administration "deeply, deeply" regrets the loss of innocent life apparently as the result of a U.S. bombing in Afghanistan and will undertake a full review of the incident.

A high-level U.S. delegation will visit Syria this week - for the second time in just two months - to discuss how best to seal the Mideast state's border with Iraq, and how to stoke faltering peace talks between Syria and Israel.

Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman and White House Middle East envoy Daniel Shapiro will fly to the Syrian capital on Thursday, according to Arab diplomats who spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity.

The Obama administration's continuing outreach to Damascus comes just a few days after the release in Beirut of four Lebanese generals detained in connection with the 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The release, ordered by a United Nations court, was welcomed with joy and celebration by militant group Hezbollah and Syria's political allies inside Lebanon.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Lebanon last week and laid a wreath at Hariri's tomb. The U.S. withdrew its ambassador to Syria in 2005, following the assassination. The Syrian government has denied any role in the attack.

This week's one-day visit, which comes a couple weeks before a scheduled trip by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (at left) to Washington, is the latest sign of possible reconciliation between the two countries after years of tension.

Arab diplomats suggest Syria might represent a slightly more attainable goal on the Obama White House's Mideast agenda - certainly when compared with the dim prospect of a breakthrough in Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem met Feltman and Shapiro in March for four hours - both sides tested the waters to see what concrete offers might emerge as the countries seek to reinvent the relationship.

Senior administration officials have said the United States is now close to reappointing an ambassador to Syria. Currently, the highest-level American diplomat in Damascus is a charge d'affaires.

The U.S. is also interested in building a new embassy in Damascus. Eric Boswell, Assistant Secretary of State for diplomatic security, recently traveled to Syria to examine the security situation here.

The Obama administration believes engaging the Syrian regime will weaken Syria's strategic alliance with Iran, but Syrian officials have repeatedly dismissed the idea, saying Damascus was more than willing to be a bridge between Washington and Tehran.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to visit Damascus on Tuesday for talks with President Bashar al-Assad. The men will look for ways to further coordination and cooperation between the allies.

Syria has seemed increasingly confident on the world stage, having managed to break out of international isolation. Barely a day goes by without a Western politician or envoy knocking on Assad's palace door.

Damascus, which wields considerable influence over two of Israel's main enemies - Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon and Hamas, whose leaders are based in Damascus - has indicated that it seeks no further quarrel with Washington, even saying it would like the new administration to mediate the stalled Syria-Israel peace talks. Assad would also like to usher an end to U.S. sanctions and encourage a new influx of Western investment and technology.

Syria suspended its indirect talks with Israel to protest the Jewish state's three-week military operation in the Gaza Strip aimed at Hamas militants. The assault left about 1,300 Palestinians dead, half of them women and children, and some 5,000 more wounded.





By George Baghdadi, CBS News, May 4, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman April 26th -- a strong sign of continuing U.S. commitment to Lebanese sovereignty, independence and democracy.

"We believe strongly that the people of Lebanon must be able to choose their own representatives in open and fair elections without the specter of violence and intimidation, and certainly free of outside interference," said Secretary Clinton. The United States, she said, "will continue to support the voices of moderation in Lebanon and the other responsible institutions of the Lebanese state that they are working to build."

Secretary Clinton pledged to continue U.S. support for the ideals of Lebanon's Cedar Revolution and for the United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is investigating the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri along with 21 others in a massive bombing in Beirut in 2005.

Secretary Clinton visited the memorial to Mr. Hariri saying, "I will honor his memory and pay my respects to all those who have been killed while defending Lebanon's sovereignty and independence."

Concerning the parliamentary elections scheduled for June, Secretary Clinton reiterated the United States' view that the elections should not be compromised by violence or foreign interference.

Lebanon's armed forces, Secretary Clinton noted, remain a pillar of U.S.-Lebanon bilateral cooperation. Since 2006, the U.S. has given over $1 billion in aid to the government of Lebanon, including over $410 million in assistance to the Lebanese military.

There is only one legitimate, recognized military force in Lebanon and the Lebanese Armed Forces should be commended for its efforts to defend Lebanon's borders, to fight terrorism, and to fully implement Security Council Resolution 1701.

Secretary Clinton emphasized that the United States will not jeopardize Lebanese sovereignty or security while pursuing improved relations with Syria. The United States is committed to working with the Lebanese government to secure the right of the Lebanese people to a free, independent, and democratic way of life.




Voice of America, May 3, 2009

U.S. officials have grown increasingly alarmed by the advance of Taliban militants in Pakistan -- a development that further imperils a deal with the central government.

WASHINGTON - As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.

The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country's nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan's armed forces.

But the United States does not know where all of Pakistan's nuclear sites are located, and its concerns have intensified in the last two weeks since the Taliban entered Buner, a district 60 miles from the capital. The spread of the insurgency has left American officials less willing to accept blanket assurances from Pakistan that the weapons are safe.

Pakistani officials have continued to deflect American requests for more details about the location and security of the country's nuclear sites, the officials said.

Some of the Pakistani reluctance, they said, stemmed from longstanding concern that the United States might be tempted to seize or destroy Pakistan's arsenal if the insurgency appeared about to engulf areas near Pakistan's nuclear sites. But they said the most senior American and Pakistani officials had not yet engaged on the issue, a process that may begin this week, with President Asif Ali Zardari scheduled to visit Mr. Obama in Washington on Wednesday.

"We are largely relying on assurances, the same assurances we have been hearing for years," said one senior official who was involved in the dialogue with Pakistan during the Bush years, and remains involved today. "The worse things get, the more strongly they hew to the line, 'Don't worry, we've got it under control.' "

In public, the administration has only hinted at those concerns, repeating the formulation that the Bush administration used: that it has faith in the Pakistani Army.

"I'm confident that we can make sure that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is secure," Mr. Obama said Wednesday, "primarily, initially, because the Pakistani Army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands." He added: "We've got strong military-to-military consultation and cooperation."

But that cooperation, according to officials who would not speak for attribution because of the sensitivity surrounding the exchanges between Washington and Islamabad, has been sharply limited when the subject has turned to the vulnerabilities in the Pakistani nuclear infrastructure. The Obama administration inherited from President Bush a multiyear, $100 million secret American program to help Pakistan build stronger physical protections around some of those facilities, and to train Pakistanis in nuclear security.

But much of that effort has now petered out, and American officials have never been permitted to see how much of the money was spent, the facilities where the weapons are kept or even a tally of how many Pakistan has produced. The facility Pakistan was supposed to build to conduct its own training exercises is running years behind schedule.

Administration officials would not say if the subject would be raised during Mr. Zardari's first meeting with Mr. Obama. But even if Mr. Obama raises the subject, it is not clear how fruitful the conversation might be.

Mr. Zardari heads the country's National Command Authority, the mix of political, military and intelligence leaders responsible for its arsenal of 60 to 100 nuclear weapons. His command and control over the weapons are considered tenuous at best; that power lies primarily in the hands of the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the former director of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country's intelligence agency.

For years the Pakistanis have waved away the recurring American concerns, with the head of nuclear security for the country, Gen. Khalid Kidwai, dismissing them as "overblown rhetoric."

Americans who are experts on the Pakistani system worry about what they do not know. "For years I was concerned about the weapons materials in Pakistan, the materials in the laboratories," said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who ran the Energy Department's intelligence unit until January, and before that was a senior C.I.A. officer sent to Pakistan to determine whether nuclear technology had been passed to Osama bin Laden.

"I'm still worried about that, but with what we're seeing, I'm growing more concerned about something going missing in transport," said Mr. Mowatt-Larssen, who is now at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Several current officials said that they were worried that insurgents could try to provoke an incident that would prompt Pakistan to move the weapons, and perhaps use an insider with knowledge of the transportation schedule for weapons or materials to tip them off. That concern appeared to be what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was hinting at in testimony 10 days ago before the House Appropriations Committee. Pakistan's weapons, she noted, "are widely dispersed in the country."

"There's not a central location, as you know," she added. "They've adopted a policy of dispersing their nuclear weapons and facilities." She went on to describe a potential situation in which a confrontation with India could prompt a Pakistani response, though she did not go as far as saying that such a response could include moving weapons toward India - which American officials believed happened in 2002. Other experts note that even as Pakistan faces instability, it is producing more plutonium for new weapons, and building more production reactors.

David Albright and Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security wrote in a recent report documenting the progress of those facilities, "In the current climate, with Pakistan's leadership under duress from daily acts of violence by insurgent Taliban forces and organized political opposition, the security of any nuclear material produced in these reactors is in question." The Pakistanis, not surprisingly, dismiss those fears as American and Indian paranoia, intended to dissuade them from nuclear modernization. But the government's credibility is still colored by the fact that it used equal vehemence to denounce as fabrications the reports that Abdul Qadeer Khan, one of the architects of Pakistan's race for the nuclear bomb, had sold nuclear technology on the black market.

In the end, those reports turned out to be true.

By David E. Sanger, The New York Times, May 3, 2009

YEREVAN, Armenia, May 2 (UPI) -- Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandyan is to arrive in Washington Sunday ahead of a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, officials said.

RIA Novosti reported Clinton will meet with the Armenian foreign minister Monday to work on a settlement to the long-running Nagorny Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Turkey.

The two nations reached a road map agreement April 23 aimed at establishing bilateral relations, which have been non-existent since the massacre of ethnic Armenians in Turkey in the early 20th century.

The border between Armenia and Turkey was closed in 1993 following fighting between Armenia and Turkey's ally, Azerbaijan, over Nagorny Karabakh, the Russian news service reported.

Clinton also will meet with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov Tuesday, prior to talks between Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders in Prague May 7.

United Press International, May 2, 2009

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez on Friday condemned a U.S. report that alleges Venezuela fails to cooperate in fighting terrorism and called on President Barack Obama to end the decades-long trade embargo against Cuba.

Two weeks after Chavez and Obama exchanged smiles and handshakes at a summit in Trinidad and Tobago, the Venezuelan leader called the report "one more slander" that brings into question Obama's pledges of change.

"In the name of the Venezuelan people, I reject this new aggression by the U.S. empire," Chavez said.

The U.S. State Department's 2008 Country Reports on Terrorism criticized Chavez's "ideological sympathy" for leftist rebel groups in Colombia, saying it "limits Venezuelan cooperation with Colombia in combating terrorism." The report issued Thursday also accused the Venezuelan government of failing to systematically police its border with Colombia.

Chavez dismissed the charges, then called on Obama to prove he really wants change by ending the "criminal" embargo against Cuba.

"If Obama doesn't knock down the savage blockade against the Cuban people, it's all a lie. Everything would be a big farce," Chavez said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday acknowledged growing pressure from other Western Hemisphere nations to lift the U.S. freeze on relations with Cuba, but added that Obama would like to see some "reciprocity" from Cuba's leadership after he lifted travel and financial restrictions on Americans with Cuban relatives.

She said the Obama administration aims to turn around policies embraced by former President George W. Bush. She said the attempt to "isolate" Latin America's leftist leaders had enabled them to promote anti-U.S. sentiment while strengthening ties with China, Iran and Russia.

Venezuela's rocky relations with the Bush administration reached a low point last September when Chavez expelled the U.S. ambassador and recalled his envoy to Washington.

Clinton noted she discussed with Chavez the possibility of restoring a U.S. ambassador to Venezuela. The Venezuelan leader said following the April summit in Trinidad and Tobago that he would send a new ambassador to Washington.

Despite years of political tensions, Venezuela remains the fourth-largest oil supplier to the United States.

By RACHEL JONES, The Associated Press, May 2, 2009

At the 100-day mark last week, Hillary Clinton could finally say she beat Barack Obama.

The most recent polls show Clinton with a whopping job approval rating of 71% as secretary of state, while the new President topped out at 65%.

Even among Hillary admirers, that lofty rating is a bit of a stunner, given her past reputation as one of the most polarizing figures on the American scene.

"She's acting like a statesman and diplomat and representing her President instead of herself," said a prominent Democrat. "She hasn't gone off on her own as many predicted. It's been very rehabilitating for her image."

Her husband has helped the rehab by stifling, somewhat, his yen for headlines. Concerns that his fund-raising and foundations might pose conflicts of interest, which caused the only friction at her confirmation hearings, have not been realized - yet.

Hillary also has labored to smooth over the lingering rifts from the campaign with Obama and his inner circle, most notably First Lady Michelle Obama.

Declaring a truce at Foggy Bottom in March, Obama joked about her refusal during the campaign to mention Clinton's name, calling her "the other candidate." With a grin, Obama said, "Let me thank Secretary Clinton - I love saying that!"

Even the usual trashers of all things Clinton had a hard time being critical.

"I'm not, but give me time," said Elliot Abrams, who served on the National Security Council of former President George W. Bush and in Ronald Reagan's State Department.

Abrams noted that Obama has absorbed much of the foreign policy flak that would have gone Clinton's way by getting himself stuck in no-win situations, such as the "happy, smiley" photo op with flaky Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

He knocked Clinton for putting human rights on the back burner on her China trip, but gave her high marks for turning around a department that had been on the losing end of turf wars with the Pentagon under Bush.

Clinton is "using her political talents in the building. She's talking to people; she's nice to people. Morale is good," said Abrams.

And she's playing well with others. Unlike former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, who was barely civil to Bush Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert Gates had Clinton's back at a Senate hearing last week.

"I couldn't agree with you more," Gates said repeatedly as Clinton rattled off talking points.

Obama has piled the diplomatic plate high for Clinton, tasking her with risky openings to Iran and Cuba, while getting North Korea to disarm, putting down the Taliban threat in Pakistan and bringing the Israelis and Palestinians back to negotiations.

But Clinton gave herself a pat on the back for her initial efforts in a 13-page "100 Day Report" put out by State, noting her visits to 18 countries and meetings with 150 foreign leaders while logging more than 71,000 air miles since taking office.

In the report, Clinton pledged a high-profile focus on "tackling crises" around the world and a new emphasis on humility - not a trait normally associated with a former presidential candidate.

Clinton said she would give priority to "acknowledging our own errors where we have made them, which will serve as an example to others to do the same."

The new and improved Hillary is being noted - even by Republicans. "It's nice to see the relationship the two of you have built," Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) told Clinton and Gates last week, "and I'm very pleased with what you're doing."

By Richard Sisk, New York DAILY NEWS, May 3rd 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration is working to improve deteriorating U.S. relations with a number of Latin American nations to counter growing Iranian, Chinese and Russian influence in the Western Hemisphere, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday.

Clinton said U.S. officials are looking at renewing envoys and other strategies aimed at Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador to improve ties that languished during the Bush administration. Clinton said the U.S. also wants better relations with Cuba but wants to evidence of reform there.

Speaking to State Department employees Friday at a town-hall meeting, Clinton said Republican President George W. Bush's policy had been counterproductive, allowing leftist leaders like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega to promote anti-U.S. sentiment and rely on aid from China, Iran and Russia.

"We see a number of countries and leaders - Chavez is one of them but not the only one - who over the last eight years has become more and more negative and oppositional to the United States," Clinton said.

Clinton noted that last month she spoke with Chavez at the Summit of the Americas about returning a U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, the same gathering where President Barack Obama's handshake with Chavez drew diplomatic attention. Clinton said she also wants to work with Morales to send back an American ambassador to Bolivia.

Chavez expelled the U.S. envoy to Venezuela in September in solidarity with Morales who ordered out the top U.S. diplomat in Bolivia for allegedly helping the opposition incite violence.

The Bush administration "tried to isolate them, tried to support opposition to them, tried to turn them into international pariahs," Clinton said. "It didn't work. We are going to see what other approaches might work."

Clinton said that the growing influence from China and Iran in Latin America is "quite disturbing. They are building very strong economic and political connections with a lot of these leaders. I don't think that's in our interest."

Clinton said improving relations with Nicaragua, which last year elected Ortega, the former Sandinista leader, president was important to counter Iran's growing influence.

"We are looking to figure out how to deal with Ortega," Clinton said. She noted that "the Iranians are building a huge embassy in Managua. You can only imagine what it's for."

She acknowledged there is growing pressure from other Western Hemisphere nations to lift the decades-long U.S. freeze on relations with Cuba.

But Clinton said the U.S. still wants signs from President Raul Castro and his ailing brother, Fidel, that they will allow reforms in response to Obama's lifting of travel and financial restrictions on Americans with Cuban relatives.

"We would like to see some reciprocity from the Castros on political prisoners, human rights and other matters," Clinton said.

Fidel Castro said Friday he found "some new elements" in the Obama administration's easing of restrictions, but he bristled at the White House's steps toward improving relations with Cuba.

Castro wrote in a May Day message that the U.S. would like to see Cubans return "to the fold of slaves, who, after tasting liberty, again accept the whip and the yoke."

Clinton stressed that the administration has no illusions about rapid progress with leaders who have fundamentally different ideas on governance.

But it is important to try, she said.

"We think it is worth trying to just explore this and see what comes of it," she said.

By MATTHEW LEE, The Associated Press, May 1, 2009

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the Obama administration is working to improve relations with Latin American leaders, in part, to counter the growing influence of China, Iran and Russia. Clinton says it is not in U.S. interests to shun countries in its own hemisphere.

At a town hall meeting Friday at the State Department, Secretary Clinton said the Bush administration's attempts to isolate anti-U.S. leaders only made them more opposed to the United States. "From my perspective the prior administration tried to isolate them, tried to support opposition to them, tried to turn them into international pariahs. It did not work," she said.

Clinton said the United States can no longer afford such an approach, especially when competing for influence with countries like Russia, China and Iran. "If you look at gains, particularly in Latin America, that Iran is making and China is making, it is quite disturbing. They are building very strong economic and political connections with a lot of these leaders. I do not think that is in our interests," she said.

U.S officials have accused Iran of subversive activity in Latin America, calling newly opened Iranian offices in the region "fronts" for interfering in local affairs.

Both Iran and China have been boosting their cooperation with Latin American nations in financial and other areas. Venezuela has been at the heart of their efforts, with President Hugo Chavez making official visits to both Tehran and Beijing earlier this year. Venezuela has also been cooperating with Russia on naval exercises and other agreements.

Secretary Clinton said the United States is now trying to improve its own relationships with Mr. Chavez and other leaders to counter Iran, China and Russia.

Clinton said she is working on getting U.S. envoys back into Venezuela and Bolivia, which expelled U.S. ambassadors last year after Bolivian President Evo Morales accused the top U.S. diplomat in his country of helping the opposition incite violence

Clinton said she also wants to improve relations with Ecuador, as well as Nicaragua, where she said Iran is building an embassy. On Cuba, she indicated a desire to make changes, but only if the Castro brothers are willing to reciprocate.

Secretary Clinton said the Obama administration has "no illusions" about making progress with leaders who have different views, but that pursuing better relationships is worth a try.




By Alex Villarreal, Voice of America, May 2, 2009

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday defended new moves to engage anti-US leaders in Latin America as a way to check what she called "disturbing" Iranian and Chinese inroads in the region.

Clinton said President Barack Obama has had to take a new tack after his predecessor George W. Bush's efforts to isolate such leaders had only made them "more negative" toward Washington and more receptive to rival powers.

"I don't think in today's world ... that it is in our interest to turn our back on countries in our own hemisphere," Clinton told diplomats and other State Department staff.

She described the new world as "a multipolar world where we are competing for attention and relationships with at least the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians," adding such countries can soon fill the void.

"If you look at the gains, particularly in Latin America, that Iran is making, that China is making, it's quite disturbing," the chief US diplomat said.

"They're building very strong economic and political connections with a lot of these leaders. I don't think that it's in our interests," Clinton said.

She did not explicitly refer to inroads by Russia, which said in March it could seek the short-term use of bases in Cuba and Venezuela.

Her answer was prompted by concerns aired by a retired State Department official about the Obama administration's overtures toward Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, an elected leftist-populist anti-US firebrand.

Clinton said Washington -- which has also made overtures to communist Cuba -- was still exploring how to deal with Chavez, Nicaraguan President Daniel Noriega, Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa and Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Earlier this month, the United States welcomed Venezuela's move to restore full diplomatic ties between the two countries -- broken in September -- by returning its ambassador to Washington.

Obama and Chavez met at the opening of a 34-nation Americas summit and photos of the encounter showed the US leader smiling as he shook the Venezuelan's hand and patted him on the shoulder.

It was Obama's first encounter with the Venezuelan leader, which critics back home assailed as naive and "irresponsible".

Obama hit back, saying: "It's unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interest of the United States."

But he stressed he still had concerns about Venezuela and Chavez's often heated rhetoric.

US ties with Ecuador and Bolivia remain tense over counter-narcotics.

Quito expelled two US diplomats who were probing alleged drug links with a former top official, which the Ecuadoran government denounced as interference in its domestic affairs.

The Bolivian government recently expelled the US ambassador to La Paz, Philip Goldberg, and the US Drug Enforcement Agency after accusing them of plotting against the government.

In March, a US diplomat in La Paz, Francisco Martinez, was expelled on charges of conspiracy.

The Israel Project, a non-profit organization independent of the Israeli government, said Iran is capitalizing on anti-US sentiment among South American leftist governments to make economic and military investments in the region.

It said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Brazil on May 6 is part of the effort.

It added that Iran's allies include Chavez and Morales.

"Over the past few years, Iran has also developed new political ties with Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay," according to the Israel Project.

"The alliances among Iran, Venezuela, and Bolivia are of particular concern because they account for almost 10 percent of global oil production, giving them a substantial bargaining position in the negotiation of global oil prices," it said.

AFP, May 1, 2009

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Hillary Clinton, marking 100 days as chief US diplomat, said Friday she is heartened by a "positive" response to the new US foreign policy and joked that a gaffe with Russia may end up boosting ties.

"This is my 100th day serving as secretary of state," Clinton told foreign service officers who recalled her arrival for work at the State Department on January 22, two days after President Barack Obama took office.

"We've reinforced our relationships with key allies and historic partners in Europe and Asia," she said.

"We've engaged emerging nations and pivotal regional actors on issues of common concern, from climate change and energy to democracy and good governance and regional and global security," Clinton added.

But she acknowledged that the Obama team's efforts to repair ties frayed during president George W. Bush's tenure represented just "a beginning" and that it does not "have any illusions" about the challenges ahead.

But she said: "As I have traveled on behalf of our country, we have been heartened by the positive outreach that many, who had either withdrawn or become somewhat adversarial, are willing to evidence."

Clinton listed the key challenges as bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq as well as "charting the best course forward in the Middle East" and dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"We have worked to reset our relationship, even though we didn't spell "reset" right in Russian," she said, stirring laughter.

"We have actually thought back on that as a moment of levity which may well have increased their willingness to cooperate with us," she said.

During their first meeting in Geneva on March 6 as top diplomats, Clinton gave her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov a "reset" button with an ironic misspelling.

The gift was meant to underscore the new administration's readiness "to press the reset button" in ties with Moscow, but instead of the Russian word for "reset" (perezagruzka) it featured a slightly different word meaning "overload" or "overcharged" (peregruzka).

Russian newspapers poked fun at the incident.

A correspondent for NTV television called it a "symbolic mistake," pointing out that US-Russian ties had become overcharged in recent years due to discord over such issues as missile defence and last August's war in Georgia.

Clinton also talked of fighting trafficking in drugs and human beings, terrorism and pandemic diseases, such as swine flu.

During her speech, Clinton appeared congested but State Department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters "she suffers from mild allergies. That's all it is."

AFP, May 1, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday that Roxana Saberi is on a hunger strike in Iran and that she is very concerned over the imprisoned journalist's health and well-being.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday she is very concerned about the health and well-being of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, who is on a hunger strike after being convicted in Iran on spying charges and sentenced to eight years in jail.

"She is extremely unhappy and quite rebellious about being held in such a horrible situation and is on a hunger strike," Clinton told the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The United States has called the charges against Saberi baseless, and the State Department has offered Iran U.S. goodwill if it responds in a positive way to her release.

The U.S. is working with Swiss diplomats in Iran to get details about the court's decision and to ensure Saberi's well-being.

Appearing before the Committee to discuss funding requests for security efforts in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Clinton said Iran's legal process is questionable and appears "impervious" to "civilized standards," nonetheless the U.S. continues to reach out through every channel it can to appeal for her release.

"She has arbitrarily been in our view held without any kind of transparency or process. We have called on the Iranian government, both directly and through other emissaries, to release her," Clinton said.

Saberi's conviction is the first time Iran has found an American journalist guilty of espionage -- a crime that can carry the death penalty.

Saberi, a 31-year-old dual citizen of the United States and Iran, was arrested in late January and initially accused of working without press credentials. But earlier this month, an Iranian judge leveled a far more serious allegation, charging her with spying for the United States.

The Fargo, N.D., native had been living in Iran for six years and had worked as a freelance reporter for several news organizations, including FOX News and National Public Radio.

Fox News, April 30, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just spoke briefly at the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the budget supplemental about how the State Department is responding to swine flu.

State has established an influenza monitoring group based in the State Department operations center, and they are tracking and monitoring how other governments are responding to the outbreak. Clinton added that her department is constantly reviewing and refining advice to Americans who travel or live abroad. (There was no mention of Vice President Biden's recommendations this morning).

She reminded the committee that USAID is giving the World Health Organization and PanAmerican Health Organization $5 million to help contain and treat the disease in Mexico.

Finally, she said that she is very cognizant of the role the U.S. must play in attempting to stem and contain this outbreak.

By Courtney Kube, MSNBC, April 30, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) - Under pressure from Congress to develop ways to measure progress in Afghanistan, two top aides to President Barack Obama said the administration was readying benchmarks to gauge security, governance and economic development there.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, testifying alongside Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, also urged the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday to approve an $83.4 billion spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by Memorial Day.

Gates said Pentagon money for Pakistan will be exhausted next month, and funds for U.S. military operations will start running out in July.

The Obama administration's effort to craft benchmarks come as lawmakers warn that Congress may try to condition budget approval for the Afghanistan war on whether improvements are being made there on a number of fronts.

Lawmakers frustrated with the Bush administration adopted their own set of measures to judge progress in the Iraq war, leading some to suggest that they would do the same for Afghanistan unless the Obama administration acts promptly to set its own.

"Before we get mired down in the new budget we probably ought to step back for a moment and look at the mission that we really want to achieve in Afghanistan," Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said.

Administration officials are making progress on drafting elaborate benchmarks for the Afghanistan war, but the proposals have not been submitted to the Cabinet or the president, Gates said.

"We're going to be measuring from every perspective, whether it's diplomatic and development efforts or military efforts of intelligence efforts or agricultural development," Clinton said. "So I hope that the Congress will give us a chance to put these in place."

The benchmarks are expected to measure levels of violence, improvements in the Afghan security forces, counter-narcotics efforts, agricultural programs, economic development and the provision of services for the Afghan people.

Gates also strongly defended a new $400 million program to provide training and equipment for Pakistan's military in order to battle insurgents along the border with Afghanistan.

Some of the new Pakistan money, Gates said, would go to building fortified stations along the border, where the U.S. and Pakistan militaries would coordinate security operations.

There currently is one border control center located in Afghanistan at the Khyber Pass. But officials have talked about building several more to better share information between the U.S., Pakistan, Afghanistan and other NATO forces. The Khyber Pass center has been operating for about a year.

The $400 million Pakistan military aid bill is the initial downpayment on a five-year, $3 billion program. The package would also fund training of Pakistan's Frontier Corps, a rural police unit.

Acknowledging that there are divisions between U.S. agencies over who should control the funds, Gates said he expects the training program to be turned over to State Department by 2011.

Both Gates and Clinton repeated what Obama and other U.S. officials have said recently, contending that an upsurge of militants inside Pakistani is prodding the nation's leaders to view extremists as more of a national threat than longtime rival India.

Money and support for Pakistan has been a central concern in the administration's new strategy for the Afghanistan war. Obama and other top officials are expected to meet with Pakistani leaders in Washington next week.

The bulk of the spending bill is for military operations, but $7.1 billion is for the State Department for international affairs and stabilization activities, including funds for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The war spending measure also includes:

- $38 billion to maintain forces on the two war fronts, taking into account the expected decrease in troops in Iraq and the planned increase in troops in Afghanistan.

- $11.6 billion to replace and repair equipment that has been worn out, damaged or destroyed in the wars, including four F-22 fighters.

- $2.7 billion to buy 1,000 mine-resistant vehicles for Afghanistan, and other upgrades.

The White House has said this will be the last special funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan, as the money will largely be folded into the main Pentagon spending measure.

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, The Associated Press, April 30, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) - Friday marks Hillary Rodham Clinton's 100th day as the top U.S. diplomat and the State Department is commemorating the occasion with a 13-page list praising what it considers her early achievements.

The lengthy document posted on the department's Web site this week extols the secretary of state's hectic travel abroad and the appointments of four high-profile special envoys to deal with trouble spots and climate change.

The assessment says "early and significant progress" has already been achieved in Afghanistan-Pakistan policy, the Middle East, Iraq, Asia, Russia, North Korea, Latin America, climate change and public diplomacy through the use of new media.

Compiled by the department's public affairs staff with help from the State's regional and other bureaus, the document notes that the Obama administration "inherited a gathering global storm: riots, protests, long lines of unemployed and increasingly desperate people around the world."

Even in her first 100 days, the document contends, "Secretary Clinton and the State Department have made significant progress in advancing America's national security goals and promoting America's values around the world."

"We must seize this moment to advance and begin to deliver on a positive global agenda," the State document concludes.

The report then goes on to add that Clinton and her team have done exactly that.

By MATTHEW LEE, The Associated Press, April 30, 2009

The first 100 days of the Obama administration have produced any numbers of winners and losers.

We took a first crack at highlighting the winningest winners and losingest losers earlier this morning in our White House Cheet Sheet but since then the suggestions have been pouring in -- and we've thought of a few more in the interim.

Our extended entry of winners and losers is below. Feel free to add any other suggestions in the comments section.

WINNERS

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Who would have thought that in less than one year Clinton would go from a defeated presidential candidate to the country's top diplomat? Clinton decision to leave politics (forever?) has paid off as her approval number are through the roof. (A mid-March CNN poll showed 71 percent of Americans approved of the job she was doing as secretary of state.) Clinton has been measured and effective as an advocate for the president's policies and has shown an amazing adaptability as she moves from political circles to diplomatic ones.

Al Franken: Franken, who built his fame on his willingness to say whatever was on his mind in almost any situation, has effectively curtailed that tendency as the legal fight over whether or not he won the Minnesota Senate race last November has dragged out for an interminably long time. Franken has kept a very low public profile, emerging only to issue statements of confidence following his victories in court. He has also given every appearance of taking quite seriously the very real prospect that he will be a senator at some point, traveling to Washington to attend briefings and discuss issues with his potential Democratic colleagues.

LOSERS

U.S. Auto Industry: With deadlines to restructure their business models fast approaching, there doesn't appear to be a heck of a lot of optimism within the auto industry about how it can save itself. The Obama Administration is working overtime to try and salvage Chrysler but even the president acknowledged that it was touch and go.

Howard Dean: The former chairman of the Democratic National Committee spent the first 100 days trying to find a place for himself in the Obama administration (Health and Human Services Secretary, U.S. Surgeon General) and being shunted aside each time. Without an obvious next step, Dean has been on the lecture circuit -- giving speeches about the future of progressive politics on college campuses around the country. Does Dean deserve the treatment he has received? Probably not.

By Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post, April 29, 2009

The Obama administration seeks to please a strongman by ignoring his crackdown on domestic opposition.

ONE OF Venezuela's most important politicians was granted asylum in Peru this week. Manuel Rosales, a former state governor who challenged Hugo Chavez in the 2006 presidential election and won election as mayor of Maracaibo last fall, fled the country to avoid imprisonment. He was being prosecuted on dubious corruption charges; the investigation began only after Mr. Chavez shouted on television that "I'm going to put you in jail, Rosales!" Mr. Rosales is one of at least seven major Chavez opponents, including three of the five opposition state governors, who have been imprisoned or subjected to criminal or tax investigations during the past two months.

It is reasonable to ask how the Obama administration is reacting to this major new campaign against what remains of Venezuela's democracy, especially given the president's friendly handshake with Mr. Chavez at the Summit of the Americas two weeks ago. The answer: It isn't. The administration has maintained a deliberate silence about the persecution of the elected politicians, a dissident former defense minister and a leading journalist. Meanwhile, the State Department is lauding what it calls the "positive development" in U.S.-Venezuelan relations: Mr. Chavez's offer to exchange ambassadors. "We buy a lot of their oil," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week. "Let's see if we can begin to turn that relationship."

Ms. Clinton seems to believe that Mr. Chavez's escalating domestic repression shouldn't be an impediment to better relations with the United States -- an attitude in keeping with her already-stated views about such nations as China, Egypt and Turkey. She pointed out in her congressional testimony that Venezuela has been developing close relations with Iran, and that "it's a serious matter if any country in our hemisphere falls under the sway of Iran or someone else who is inimicable to our interests."

"Let's try to see whether there is any opportunity to move President Chavez away from the influences" of Iran and others, she proposed.

That's certainly a worthy goal -- and we have no objection to Mr. Obama's handshake with Mr. Chavez. The administration's strategy -- to open up a constructive dialogue with Venezuela and avoid being cast as Mr. Chavez's Yanqui foil -- is reasonable; it is also the same strategy as was tried, unsuccessfully, by the previous two administrations. What doesn't make sense is to deliberately ignore steps by Mr. Chavez to consolidate an autocracy. In so doing, the administration encourages Latin American governments that have shrunk from confronting the Venezuelan strongman to continue in their own silence. It sends pro-Chavez governments in countries such as Bolivia and Nicaragua the message that they can persecute their own domestic opponents with impunity. And it makes it more rather than less likely that Venezuela, with the help of Iran and Russia, will become a threat to the United States.

Peru's democratic government is to be congratulated for its decision to offer Mr. Rosales asylum. It is shameful that the Obama administration won't say so.

The Washington Post, April 30, 2009

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently traveled to Iraq with an important message: The United States stands by its "full and continuing commitment to Iraq and the Iraqi people."

The U.S., said Secretary Clinton, "is committed to seeing an Iraq that is sovereign, and self-reliant, and fully integrated into the region."

Violence in Iraq has been on the up-tick since March. Shortly before Secretary Clinton's arrival in Baghdad, 4 suicide bombings killed more than 160 Iraqis.

"I condemn these violent recent efforts to disrupt the progress that Iraq is making," said Secretary Clinton. "My heart and America's sympathy," she said, "go out to the people who have died and the families who have suffered. This violence has only reinforced the Iraqi people's determination to seek a better future for their country. Their response and the response of Iraq's leaders have been united and firm."

The way to deal with the violence, said Secretary Clinton, is for the U.S. to continue to help train and equip Iraqi security forces. Eventually these forces will be capable of taking the lead in safeguarding Iraq from sectarian violence.

The end of the United States' combat presence in Iraq by 2011 will mark the beginning of a new phase in U.S.-Iraqi relations. As the U.S. draws down militarily, civilian cooperation will increase in accordance with the strategic framework agreement signed in December 2008. The U.S. will work on development and diplomatic initiatives and a regional agenda that includes border security and refugees.

The Iraqi people, said Secretary of State Clinton, "have withstood challenges of the most vicious and violent sort from those who would have torn their society apart, and Iraqis from everywhere have made tremendous sacrifices. The United States has also shared in those sacrifices. But we are proud of the progress that the Iraqi people have made," said Secretary Clinton.

And the United States stands with the people of Iraq as they build a future worthy of all of the children of Iraq.




Voice of America, April 28, 2009

Barack Obama's presidency has been dominated by the economic crisis, but that has not stopped him from trying to launch a massive recalibration of US foreign policy.

The breadth of issues he has tackled in this short time is unprecedented, prompting former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to write recently in the Washington Post that "the possibility of comprehensive solutions is unprecedented".

There is no guarantee that any of it will lead to success over the next four years, but the new administration is aiming high.

Within a few days of his inauguration, Mr Obama started checking off the long to-do list he had discussed during his campaign.

Mending relations

He announced the appointment of a special envoy to the Middle East to tackle the intractable conflict, declaring that peace in the region was "important to the United States and our national interest [and] important to me personally".

He shifted attention away from a war he opposed, in Iraq, back to the "clear and focused goal, to dismantle, disrupt and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan," a mission started under President George W Bush but which lost steam as the Iraq War unravelled.

He reached out to the Muslim world and started mending America's image around the world, declaring he would close the controversial detention centre in Guantanamo Bay.

He sought to reset relations with Russia - and mark what could be turning points in America's relations with Cuba and Iran.

On every foreign trip, in every meeting with a foreign leader, President Obama has said he wants to listen, not dictate, hoping to set the stage for a more co-operative foreign policy.

"I think it's been very important, the tone that President Obama, Secretary Clinton, Secretary Gates have fashioned," says Wendy Sherman, a former Clinton administration official who is now a Principal at the Albright Group, a global strategy firm.

"It is a tone of leading and listening... [Understanding] that the world is a complicated place [and] the United States alone cannot solve all of these problems," she says.

"But also understanding that the US has a responsibility to lead, accepts that responsibility, will be held accountable for that responsibility.

"So, I think they've gotten off to a tremendous start in probably the most complex world I've seen in my lifetime."

But critics say that President Obama's attempts to reach out to allies to win their co-operation is a gamble that has not (so far) paid off.

Commentators writing about Mr Obama's trip to Europe said it was a success on many levels, but he had still come home empty-handed on issues like European troop commitments for Afghanistan.

Changing landscape

So far Mr Obama has delivered plenty of foreign policy vision, but less in the way of substance.

Many experts say that is what the first 100 days are all about - but the gaps need to be filled out soon.

"The administration has launched the country on an important diplomatic enterprise. It now needs to fulfil its vision with a diplomatic plan," wrote Mr Kissinger.

Complicating some of the policy formulations is a fast-changing world.

Crisis and conflicts have erupted in Mexico, Pakistan and even Iraq where violence is rising again.

Elections are changing the political landscape in which the administration has to operate and the interlocutors it ends up with, from Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel to potential new governments in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Iran.

By the president's side is a straight-talking secretary of state with her own star-power and some 60,000 air miles already under her belt - Hillary Clinton.

The administration's new emphasis on diplomacy means the state department is squarely back at the heart of America's efforts to engage with the world, from allies to rivals.

The policy formulation in this administration is a tightly controlled process, closely co-ordinated between the White House, the National Security Council and the Pentagon, with everybody so far seemingly on-message.

The rivalries that plagued the first term of George W Bush have been avoided, despite a cast of very powerful players.

Contrition 'does nothing'

But as he undoes past policies, Barack Obama is also facing criticism, albeit from expected sources.

"I think going abroad and being so contrite for so many alleged sins of the United States is not something that Americans want to see in their leaders when they're travelling abroad," says John Hannah, who was an adviser to former Vice-President Dick Cheney.

He added that the policy of contrition was not even proving effective in changing the behaviour of countries in the world that were of concern to the US, like Iran or Cuba.

President Obama has tried to engage with America's long-time foe, Iran, issuing a video address to both the people and leaders of Iran and calling the country by its official name, the Islamic Republic Iran, to signal that Washington was not seeking regime change.

On Cuba, he has lifted restrictions on travel and remittances for Cuban-Americans, but his handshake with Washington's bete noire, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, prompted critics to say the president had to avoid turning engagement into pandering.

The new approach is helping to change the mood and perhaps even the internal dynamic in places like Tehran and Havana, as Cubans and Iranians start to debate the benefits of engagement with the US.

On her first trip abroad, Mrs Clinton said that by engaging "something positive might actually happen, you never know".

"But if you stand at opposite sides of the room and refuse to engage, it's guaranteed nothing will happen," she added.

The momentum and goodwill are still there and the vision has been laid out in the first 100 days, but the next 1,000 days will determine whether this administration will be able to implement its vision and achieve results or whether it has bitten off more than it can chew in a complex world.

The biggest tests are yet to come.

By Kim Ghattas, BBC News, April 29, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on leaders of the world's largest economies today to rein in greenhouse gas emissions and pledged that the United States will "lead the way."

In opening remarks to the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, Clinton called climate change a "clear and present danger to our world" and told environment ministers from the world's 17 largest economies that the Obama administration is "fully engaged in negotiations toward a global emissions treaty."

"I assure you that the United States will work tirelessly toward a successful outcome of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations," Clinton said.

Seated around a table in the State Department's Loy Henderson Auditorium were ministers from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Officials from Denmark, which is hosting the U.N. climate conference in December, also are attending, as is U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer.

As the world's biggest economies -- and the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters -- they and the United States have a "special responsibility" to address climate change, Clinton said. And, she said, that includes fast-growing countries like China and India, which so far have resisted calls to slash greenhouse gas output.

Together the gathered countries create more than 80 percent of the world's emissions. China and the United States alone are responsible for 41 percent of global greenhouse gas pollution, and last year China surpassed the United States as the world's largest contributor to global warming.

Clinton assured China and other emerging nations that the United States "wants you to grow" and is intent on finding solutions that will allow countries to combat climate change without stunting development.

"Of course, each economy here is different. Some, like mine, are responsible for past emissions; others for fast-growing current emissions," she said. "We may be at different stages of development ... but we all have to do our part."

Todd Stern, the Obama administration's climate envoy, will be leading the two days of discussions. The talks are expected to cover a range of issues, including how far nations will be willing to go in reducing emissions, and some bilaterial partnerships that could be established to spur low-carbon technology development.

President George W. Bush originally spearheaded the gatherings, calling them the Major Economies Meetings -- though many referred to them as the "major emitters meetings." Through the Bush years, though, many critics accused the administration of using the forum to undermine global U.N. talks toward a treaty.

Clinton today said the Obama administration wants the meetings to help smooth discussions in treaty talks, which are expected to come to a head in December at a major summit in Copenhagen.

Kevin Curtis, deputy director of the Pew Environment Group, issued a statement hailing the talks as a "much needed momentum boost" to climate change talks and called on the United States to propose significant financial support to help developing nations cope with the effects of climate change and adapt to a low-carbon future.

"By working with China and India toward common goals on climate change, President Obama is sending a clear signal to Congress that his administration is committed to addressing global warming and he is asking other countries to join him," Curtis said.

By LISA FRIEDMAN, Greenwire, April 27, 2009

Credit Hillary Clinton's relentlessness for the decision Arlen Specter made Tuesday to abandon the Republican Party and become a Democrat. It wasn't her immediate goal, of course, but when Clinton decided to carry the primary to Pennsylvania despite incredibly high odds, the resulting statewide campaign led to hundreds of thousands of Republicans registering as Democrats so that they could vote in the April 22nd contest.

In terms of the delegate count, the primary campaign was effectively over in February, when Obama ran the caucus table. But Clinton soldiered on. A massive voter registration drive by both candidates ran up to the deadline of March 24th in Pennsylvania and was extremely successful.

Specter twice cited the voter-registration shift in explaining his decision to leave the party, saying that he didn't want his congressional career to be judged only by the right wing voters who had remained in the Republican Party.

An internal poll that Specter received on Friday showed his chances of winning a primary in the drained Republican pool to be "bleak," he said.

"The party has shifted very far to the right. It was pretty far to the right in 2004, but to take away a couple hundred thousand Republicans who wanted to vote in the Democratic primary--they're dissatisfied with the Republican Party is the pretty obvious conclusion. So if you review the numbers and you add the math, the stimulus vote, that's why I ended up saying the prospects were bleak," he said. Republican primary voters have pilloried Specter for his yes vote on the stimulus.

"When you take a look at the Pennsylvania Republican electorate, several hundred thousand Republicans shifted last year and it has a bleak picture. We do not have a dominant voice there," Specter said.

It had become clear to Specter, he added, that the Republican Party would not come to his defense against the far-right elements remaining in Pennsylvania. A reporter unleashed a tirade when she asked what his decision said about Republicans on Capitol Hill.

"The Republicans didn't rally to Wayne Gilchrest in Maryland who was beaten by the Club for Growth and the far right [in the GOP primary] and [the Club's candidate then] lost the general election. Republicans didn't rally to the banner of Joe Schwartz of Michigan and he was beaten by a conservative and the Club for Growth and they lost the general election," said Specter, adding to the list Heather Wilson, another moderate beaten by a Club for Growth candidate who lost the general election. The Club's founder, Pat Toomey, had declared his bid against Specter in the 2010 primary.

His biggest beef with the Club, however, was over Lincoln Chafee, the moderate Rhode Island senator. Chafee won his primary in 2006 against a Club candidate but was so weakened and drained of cash he lost the general election.

"And had Linc Chafee been elected in 2006 the Republicans would have controlled the Senate in 2007 and 2008 and I would have been chairman of the [Judiciary] committee and President Bush nominated 13 circuit judges. They were all left on the table for President Obama. And President Bush nominated 21 district court judges and they were all left on the table for President Obama. Now take the social conservatives in America and how they prize circuit judges," said Specter.

"And for people who are Republicans to sit by and allow them to continue to dominate the party, after they beat Chafee, cost us Republican control of the Senate and lost us 34 federal judges, there oughta be a rebellion. There oughta be an uprising. So thanks for asking me the question about what are the Republicans like here," he said.

By Ryan Grim, The Huffington Post, April 28, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told representatives from 16 major world economies Monday that the United States is moving quickly to address global warming.

At an international forum on energy and climate change organized by President Barack Obama, Clinton said the U.S. no longer doubts the urgency or magnitude of the problem.

"The United States is fully engaged and ready to lead and determined to make up for lost time both at home and abroad," Clinton said at the start of the two-day meeting. "The United States is no longer absent without leave."

The Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate Change was announced in March by Obama and includes the countries responsible for 75 percent of the global emissions of heat-trapping gases. Its goal is to lay the groundwork for an international agreement to curb climate-changing pollution by December.

That's when delegates from 175 countries will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, to forge a new treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The Kyoto Protocol required 37 countries to cut emissions by a total of 5 percent by 2012.

During President George W. Bush's tenure, the United States refused to take part in the Kyoto regime, calling it unfair since it made no demands on rapidly developing economies like China and India.

Outside the State Department on Monday, police shut down a street and arrested seven Greenpeace activists for unlawful entry. Two of the environmentalists had climbed a construction crane and hung a 600-square-foot banner with an image of Earth that read: "Too big to fail. Stop global warming, rescue the planet."

Clinton referred to the fragile planet when she told leaders that the U.S. was "working tirelessly" to ensure that this time there would be a successful outcome. But she acknowledged that there is no sense in negotiating an agreement if it will not have a practical impact in reducing emissions, meaning developing countries such as India and China will have to be included.

"Of course each economy represented here is different. And some, like mine, is responsible for past emissions, some for quickly growing present emissions," she said. "But people everywhere have a legitimate aspiration for a higher standard of living. We want people to have a higher standard of living. We just hope we can work together in a way to avoid the mistakes that we made that have created a large part of the problem that we face today."

As evidence that the U.S. was taking action, Clinton cited the recent finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that six greenhouse gases pose threats to human health and welfare.

Calling it "a decisive break with past policy," Clinton said the ruling opened the door to tighter regulations on tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks. But those regulations will take time.

Another Obama initiative - new legislation setting mandatory limits on greenhouse gases — is meeting stiff resistance in Congress, where House Republicans and moderate Democrats are concerned about the cost. That bill will be the primary mechanism for the U.S. to reduce emissions and will set the targets necessary to negotiate and follow through on an agreement.

At the last major meeting on a new climate treaty in Bonn earlier this month, little progress was made on two key issues: the carbon emissions targets to be adopted by rich countries and how to raise an estimated $100 billion a year to help poor countries adapt to climate change.

Developing countries want industrial nations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases by at least 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. The Obama administration has called for a 14 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2020. Legislation being considered by Congress would reduce greenhouse gases by 20 percent by 2020, but opponents are already pushing for a more modest reduction.

By DINA CAPPIELLO, The Associated Press, April 27, 2009

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged North Korea to return to its obligations to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons.

Earlier, North Korea announced it had started re-processing spent fuel rods at the Yongbyon nuclear plant.

Mrs Clinton said she hoped the US and its partners would be able to resume discussions with Pyongyang.

Pyongyang pulled out of six-party talks last week, in response to world condemnation of a recent missile test.

The reprocessing is a possible move towards producing weapons-grade plutonium.

The UN Security Council imposed sanctions on three North Korean companies in response to the missile launch.

Pyongyang said it would ignore the sanctions, describing them as "a wanton violation of the UN charter".

'Unacceptable'

North Korea agreed in 2005 to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes and return, at an early date, to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to UN safeguards.

The US has been involved in six-party talks including both Koreas, China, Japan and Russia.

Speaking in Baghdad, Mrs Clinton welcomed the UN Security Council's "strong statement" on the missile test.

"We hope that we'll be able to resume discussions with North Korea that will lead to their assuming responsibility for denuclearising the peninsula," she said.

Megan Mattson, a US state department spokeswoman, said separately: "We will not accept North Korea as a nuclear-weapons state."

North Korea's state news agency announced the resumption of spent fuel rod re-processing.

The re-processing would "contribute to bolstering the nuclear deterrence for self-defence", a North Korean official told the agency.

The BBC's John Sudworth in Seoul says the move confirms that, for now at least, North Korea is serious about turning its back on the six-party talks.

North Korea had partially dismantled its nuclear reactor - the source of material for a 2006 atomic test - but is thought to possess enough reprocessed plutonium for between six and eight nuclear weapons.

Therefore, in the immediate term, Pyongyang's announcement does not significantly alter the strategic balance, our correspondent adds.

BBC News, April 25, 2009

The Pakistani government appears stable for now, but the United States is worried about what will happen if it falters.

In an interview with FOX News, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who traveled to Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday ahead of elections there, said Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons makes it extra important for the government to keep a lid on the Taliban there.

"If the worst, the unthinkable, were to happen ,and this advancing Taliban encouraged and supported by Al Qaeda and other extremists were to essentially topple the government for failure to beat them back, then they would have the keys to the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan," Clinton said Saturday.

That is something Clinton said she doesn't even want to contemplate, but explains why the United States is pushing the Pakistani people to come together around a U.S. strategy for keeping their country on a stable track.

Asenior U.S. official traveling with the secretary said whatever concerns Washington has about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal are longstanding and unrelated to the Taliban's recent advances.

The official indicated that if the Taliban were to succeed in toppling the government of Pakistani President Ali Arif Zardari, the United States believes the likeliest event would be a coup by the military similar to the one that placed Pervez Musharraf in power in 1999.

On Sunday, Pakistan launched operations against militants in an area currently under a peace agreement but next to the volatile Swat Valley that the government agreed to allow the Taliban to rule.

Recent forays by the Taliban into nearby districts outside of Swat have raised alarms in Pakistan and the West. Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik said the government is serious about "flushing out" the militants.

A military commander familiar with the operations said "scores" of militants have been killed in the fighting, including a key commander.

A spokesman for Pakistan's president said the government is determined to root out the militants "hell-bent" on destroying the law and order that has been established.

Clinton said the U.S. has worked very hard with the Pakistanis to gain solid assurances that the Pakistani government and military are stable.

As the Pakistani army gets a hold on the area, the official traveling with Clinton said that discussions scheduled in Washington, D.C., in the first week of May between President Obama and Pakistani President Ali Arif Zardari will go on as planned, but Zardari will take a smaller entourage with him so as not to create "temptations" for the Taliban to use the summit period as a window in which to launch attacks.

Clinton said the Obama administration is looking in Pakistan to use the same methods as the Bush administration did in Iraq -- separating out and reconciling with those who are part of an armed campaign for political, cultural and historical reasons from those who are "hard core extremists and terrorists."

"I think that the general principle that we don't associate with these people is absolutely the same. But the opportunity as we found under the Bush Administration in Iraq is worth exploring with those elements of the Taliban that are there because they pay better than the Afghan police force pays, for example," she said.

"So what we're attempting to do is to follow what turned out to be a smart strategy in Iraq in other places, with the same level of caution, with the same level of skepticism. But understanding that we don't do business with the terrorists. But we may do business with the people who got swept up in some kind of move doesn't necessarily define their attitude toward the United States or the use of violence," Clinton said.

By James Rosen and Shannon Bream, Fox News, April 26, 2009

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton touched down in Lebanon on Sunday for a lightning visit to express support for this fragile country, six weeks before crucial parliamentary elections in which the Islamic militant group Hezbollah is expected to make significant gains.

While Mrs. Clinton said the choice of a government was up to the Lebanese people, the United States, which classifies Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, clearly hopes to bolster the electoral prospects of the existing majority, a coalition of Sunni Muslim and Christian parties.

"It won't surprise you to hear that I think moderation is important in the affairs of states," Mrs. Clinton said after meeting the president, Michel Suleiman, a former chief of the armed forces who stays above the political fray.

"We want to see a strong, independent, free and sovereign Lebanon," she said, noting that President Obama had sent Mr. Suleiman a letter expressing those sentiments. "This election will be, obviously, an important milestone."

Beyond the elections, Mrs. Clinton pledged not to undermine Lebanon in pursuing a peace deal with Syria, which supports Hezbollah and has long sought to influence Lebanon's affairs. The Obama administration dispatched two emissaries to Damascus, Syria's capital, last month to reopen diplomatic channels.

Still, the United States "will never make any deal with Syria that sells out Lebanon and the Lebanese people," Mrs. Clinton pledged. "You've been through too much."

As the Obama administration seeks to redraw the landscape in the Middle East, it is doing a lot of this kind of hand-holding. On Saturday, Mrs. Clinton traveled to Baghdad to reassure Iraqis that the United States would not abandon them, even as it began to withdraw combat troops.

Hezbollah, which waged a 34-day war against Israel in 2006, has built legitimacy here by providing a network of social services. Britain recently said it would resume contact with the group's political wing, which has one post in the current Lebanese cabinet.

So far, though, President Obama has stuck with the Bush administration's refusal to deal with Hezbollah. American officials reject the British distinction between its political and military wings, and they view the group as a proxy for Iranian and Syrian influence in the region.

"We certainly hope the election will be free of intimidation and outside interference, and that the results of the election continue a moderate, positive direction," Mrs. Clinton said.

She did not meet with Prime Minister Fouad Siniora during her two hours here. Indeed, on this, her first visit to Beirut, she saw very little, as her motorcade barreled to the presidential palace under heavy security.

But Mrs. Clinton did lay a wreath at the grave of Mr. Siniora's political patron, Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister, who was assassinated in 2005. The murder of Mr. Hariri, a close friend of former President Bill Clinton, set off vast demonstrations - later known as the Cedar Revolution - that led Syria to pull its troops out of Lebanon after 29 years.

Standing with her at the memorial, near where Mr. Hariri's limousine was blown apart by a car bomb, was his son, Saad Hariri, a billionaire who leads the majority and is campaigning energetically.

Mrs. Clinton said that "the guiding principles of the Cedar Revolution that followed his death - sovereignty and freedom of the Lebanese people - is a core value that we respect and will honor."

The United States has funneled more than $1 billion in aid to Lebanon since 2006, including $410 million for its security forces. Troops have taken part in American police training programs. And the United States is supplying the Lebanese with 12 remotely piloted military surveillance aircraft.

Still, if Lebanon ends up with a government more heavily influenced by Hezbollah as a result of the election, the Obama administration will re-evaluate its commitments, said a senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to upstage Mrs. Clinton.

The Obama administration's diplomatic gambits may have yielded one practical benefit: on Mrs. Clinton's flight from Kuwait to Beirut on Sunday, her plane flew through Syrian airspace.

Her aides insisted that the flight path was chosen by her pilots and was simply the fastest route. But on trips during the Bush administration, the secretary of state often took circuitous routes to avoid flying over Syria.




By Mark Landler, The New York Times, April 26, 2009