Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said a nuclear attack by Iran on Israel would be followed by retaliation against the Islamic Republic.

"I don't think there is any doubt in anyone's mind that were Israel to suffer a nuclear attack by Iran, there would be retaliation," she said in a taped interview airing today on ABC's "This Week" program.

Clinton was asked whether her statement as a presidential candidate that Iran would "incur massive retaliation" for attacking Israel is now official U.S. policy. "I think it is U.S. policy to the extent that we have alliances and understandings with a number of nations," Clinton said. "I think there would be retaliation."

Clinton said the U.S. needs to make clear to Iran that pursuing nuclear weapons will undermine peace and security for Iran and the entire region. With Arab states and Israel anxious about Iran's intentions, there's danger of "a Middle East arms race which leads to nuclear weapons being in the possession of other countries," she said.

Asked whether she was skeptical that President Barack Obama's policy of engagement can succeed in forestalling Iran's nuclear ambitions, Clinton replied, "Well, I am someone who is going to wait and see."

While dialogue would give both sides better information about one another, the U.S. has "to be willing to sit and listen and evaluate without giving up what we view as a primary objective of the engagement, which is to do everything we can to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state."

UN Investigation

Iran, which has been under investigation by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency since 2003, has enough low-enriched uranium to produce the minimum amount needed for a bomb if the material were further enriched to weapons grade. The government in Tehran denies that it wants atomic weapons, saying the enriched uranium is to fuel a nuclear reactor.

On the issue of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, Clinton refuted recent statements by former and current Israeli government officials that the Bush administration had verbally agreed for Israel to continue building structures within existing Jewish settlement areas.

"That was never made a part of the official record of the negotiations as it was passed on to our administration," Clinton said. "In fact, there is also a record that President Bush contradicted even that oral agreement" to which Israeli officials have referred.

Israeli Settlements

Obama and Clinton have repeatedly said Israel must cease any further settlement construction in order to abide by their commitments under the "road map" for Middle East peace that Israel and the Palestinians entered into under the Bush administration.

Clinton also said she was worried about "an arms race in Northeast Asia" in the aftermath of North Korea's multiple missile tests, purported nuclear tests and threatening rhetoric against South Korea, which the U.S. is treaty-bound to defend against attack. The Korean peninsula remains technically at war, since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Clinton said progress is being made in the UN Security Council toward imposing additional financial sanctions, an arms embargo and other measures "against North Korea with the full support of China and Russia."

"We are working very hard to create a mechanism where we can interdict North Korean shipments," to stop the Stalinist regime from proliferating weapons, as it has in the past, she said. If they try to ship nuclear material, "we will do everything we can to both interdict it and prevent it and shut off their flow of money."

Terrorist Designation

Asked if the U.S. would put North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, Clinton said, "We're going to look at it. There's a process for it. Obviously we'd want to see recent evidence of their support for international terrorism."

North Korea was removed from the list last fall after the Bush administration certified that they were not promoting terrorism. The move was intended in part as a confidence- building measure to get the government in Pyongyang to return to stalled talks to eliminate their nuclear weapons program.

By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Bloomberg, June 7, 2009

Hillary Clinton refused yesterday to rule out a pre-emptive Israeli military strike on Iran. It was the first time that a senior member of the Obama Administration had openly discussed such a possibility.

The US Secretary Of State, speaking a few days before elections in Iran that will determine the fate of President Ahmadinejad, also warned that the country would face retaliation if it launched a nuclear attack on Israel.

As President Obama extends "an open hand", seeking direct talks with Tehran in his attempt to halt its nuclear programme, Mrs Clinton appeared ready to unnerve the Iranian leadership with talk of a pre-emptive strike "the way that we did attack Iraq". She said that she was trying to put herself in the shoes of the Iranian leadership, but added that Tehran "might have some other enemies that would do that [deliver a pre-emptive strike] to them". It was a clear reference to Israel, where Binyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, has talked about the possibility of military action to halt Iran's nuclear programme - something he views as a threat to the Jewish state.

Mrs Clinton, interviewed on the ABC programme This Week a year after she conceded to Mr Obama in the Democratic primary race, said that it was US policy that a nuclear attack by Iran on Israel would be seen as an attack on the US.

"I don't think there is any doubt in anyone's mind that were Israel to suffer a nuclear attack by Iran, there would be retaliation," she said, though she did not spell out who would retaliate. She was responding to a question about her statement as a presidential candidate last year, when she said Iran would "incur massive retaliation from the United States" if it attacked Israel.

Yesterday she said: "Part of what we have to make clear to the Iranians is that their pursuit of nuclear weapons will actually trigger greater insecurity." She noted that Israel and Arab states were "deeply concerned about Iran having nuclear weapons".

She added: "So, does Iran want to face a battery of nuclear countries?"

By Tim Reid, The Times, June 8, 2009

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said charges against two American journalists detained in North Korea for illegally entering the country are baseless and they should be allowed to return home.

The U.S. government believes "that the charges against these young women are absolutely without merit or foundation," Clinton said on ABC television's "This Week." Clinton nodded when asked if she'd sent a letter asking for their release.

"I have taken every action that we thought would produce the result we're looking for," Clinton said. "We hope the trial ends quickly, it's resolved, and they're sent home."

North Korea began the trial of Euna Lee and Laura Ling on June 4, amid escalating tensions with the Obama administration after detonating a nuclear device on May 25. Kim Jong Il's regime alleges they entered the country illegally from China.

The two journalists were detained along the border March 17 while reporting for San Francisco-based Current TV, co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

By Heejin Koo, Bloomberg, June 8, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration is working with U.S. allies to develop ways to cut off North Korean shipments that may be carrying nuclear technology or other weapons.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in an interview broadcast Sunday that failing to take aggressive and effective action against North Korea could spark an arms race in northeast Asia.

"We will do everything we can to both interdict it and prevent it and shut off their flow of money," Clinton said of possible attempts by North Korea to ship nuclear material. She spoke on ABC's "This Week."

Clinton also said the U.S. is considering returning North Korea to a list of state sponsors of terrorism, after President Barack Obama pledged "a very hard look" at tougher measures because of the North's nuclear stance.

The Bush administration agreed to remove North Korea from the U.S. list of terrorist states after the North said it would dismantle its nuclear weapons facilities. It later refused to go forward with the dismantlement.

The communist country has conducted recent nuclear and missile tests, and there are concerns about the North's shipping nuclear material to other nations.

Obama's strong language on North Korea appeared to point toward nonmilitary penalties such as financial punishments, either within the United Nations or by Washington alone. Obama made the comments Saturday during his visit to France.

Clinton was asked about a letter that some senators wrote Obama about returning North Korea to the state-sponsored terrorism list.

"We're going to look at it. There's a process for it," Clinton said in the interview, taped Thursday in Egypt. "Obviously we would want to see recent evidence of their support for international terrorism."

She added, "We're just beginning to look at it. I don't have an answer for you right now."

North Korea, she said, was "taken off of the list for a purpose and that purpose is being thwarted by their actions."

The Associated Press, June 8, 2008

The most fascinating and important relationship in the Obama cabinet -- between the president and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton -- also happens to be the one we know the least about.

Have these two former rivals for the presidency really made peace? How trusted an adviser is Clinton for the president? How has she adjusted, if at all, to the subordinate role?

The president says little about the nature of their relationship -- limiting it to the broad idea that he likes to be surrounded by the best and the brightest and Clinton fits that bill.

"I actually think that Hillary Clinton has been very much a team player," Obama told Post reporters and editors days before being sworn in as president -- pronouncing himself "extraordinarily happy" with her performance.

Clinton hadn't discussed her new job or her relationship with the president in any way -- until she sat down yesterday day for an interview with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC's "This Week."

Clinton, who never gives away much of her internal thinking to the media, was far from an open book in her sitdown with Stephanpoulos but did give some insight into why she took the job and what she thinks of the man she serves.

The former first lady recounted that when she first heard the secretary of state rumors she dismissed them as media hype, and, even when Obama first asked her about the possibility, she was reluctant to consider it.

What changed her mind?

"Ultimately it came down to my feeling that, number one, when your president asks you to do something for your country, you really need a good reason not to do it," Clinton explained. "Number two, if I had won and I had asked him to please help me serve our country, I would have hoped he would say yes." (We can't help but speculate: If Clinton had won the nomination is there any way she wouldn't have picked Obama for vice president?)

As for putting the nastiness of the campaign -- typified by the "3 a.m." ad that sought to raise questions about Obama's readiness to sit in the big chair -- Clinton insisted it is no longer relevant.

She said Obama would "absolutely" be ready to field a 3 a.m. call with an international emergency, adding: "the president in his public actions and demeanor, and certainly in private with me and with the national security team, has been strong, thoughtful, decisive."

While we tend to be slightly skeptical that everything is absolutely hunky dory between the two former rivals -- a campaign that personal that went on for that long is not so easily forgotten -- it seems clear that Clinton and Obama have found a way to work together without any of the sort of public back-biting that so many expected when the former New York senator was chosen for the Cabinet.

One senior Democratic aide familiar with the interactions between the two described the relationship as "surprisingly warm."

The strength of that relationship will be tested in the coming years as Obama and Clinton seek to find a way toward Middle East peace. Obama, so far, has struck a relatively hard line with the Israelis -- insisting that a two-state solution is the proper course forward.

One theory goes that Obama's willingness to play the "bad cop" (of sorts) is balanced out by Clinton's good cop; she and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, are among the most stalwart supporters of Israel in the American government.

Can Clinton and Obama continue to make their relationship work to the mutual benefit of both sides? It's one of the central questions of the first four years of this presidency. So far, so good.

By Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post, June 8, 2009

Asked about a request from a group of senators for the administration to consider re-designating North Korea a terrorism sponsor, Hillary Clinton says the administration will look at it.

The Obama administration is working with U.S. allies to develop ways to cut off North Korean shipments that may be carrying nuclear technology or other weapons.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in an interview broadcast Sunday that failing to take aggressive and effective action against North Korea could spark an arms race in northeast Asia.

"We will do everything we can to both interdict it and prevent it and shut off their flow of money," Clinton said of possible attempts by North Korea to ship nuclear material. She spoke on ABC's "This Week."

Clinton also said the U.S. is considering returning North Korea to a list of state sponsors of terrorism, after President Barack Obama pledged "a very hard look" at tougher measures because of the North's nuclear stance.

Clinton, appearing on ABC's "This Week," called North Korea's latest actions "very provocative and belligerent." The communist regime performed a nuclear test last month and has conducted a series of short-range missile tests.

The actions have triggered condemnation from the international community, but little concrete action. Asked about a request from a group of senators for the administration to consider re-designating North Korea a terrorism sponsor, Clinton said, "Well, we're going to look at it."

"There's a process for it," she said. "Obviously we would want to see recent evidence of their support for international terrorism."

North Korea was taken off the list in October, as the regime appeared to make concessions on its nuclear program. Clinton said Sunday North Korea is undermining that agreement.

"We take it very seriously," she said. "I mean, obviously they were taken off of the list for a purpose and that purpose is being thwarted by their actions."

Clinton said she's also looking for additional sanctions against the country in the United Nations, and potentially an arms embargo or other measures. She called for a "very strong resolution with teeth that will have consequences for the North Korean regime."

The secretary of state also suggested she's concerned the trial of two American journalists in North Korea could become too intertwined with the diplomatic and political standoff between North Korea and the international community.

"Clearly, we don't want this pulled into the political issues that we have with North Korea, or the concerns that are being expressed in the United Nations Security Council," she said. "This is separate. It is a humanitarian issue and the girls should be let go."

Calling the charges "absolutely without merit or foundation," Clinton said she's been directly involved in talks over the trial and that she hopes the two young women are sent home quickly.

Fox News, June 07, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton says that if the phone rings at 3 a.m. at the White House, she's certain that President Barack Obama will know what to do.

Such a phone call in the wee hours - probably about an unexpected crisis - was a central argument that Clinton used during her primary campaign against Obama last year. She argued in a TV ad that she was the candidate with the experience to answer that 3 a.m. call.

Clinton is now secretary of state and works for President Obama. She says her boss has shown he is fully capable of handling that kind of crisis call.

Clinton told ABC's "This Week" that Obama's public and private actions show him to be strong, thoughtful and decisive.

The Associated Press, June 7, 2009

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismissed on Friday arguments that Israel and the Bush administration had an understanding under which Israel could keep expanding Jewish settlements on the West Bank.

Clinton's hard line suggests President Barack Obama has no intention of relenting on his call for a settlement freeze by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose fragile, two-month old government could fall if he heeded it.

The United States wants Israel to keep its commitment under the 2003 "road map" peace plan to halt all settlement activity, including so-called "natural growth," under which new homes are built within existing enclaves for growing settler families.

Netanyahu on Monday defied the U.S. demand, saying Israel would keep building in existing settlements on territory Israel occupied during the 1967 Middle East war.

Dov Weisglass, chief of staff to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said in an op-ed piece published this week in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot that the Bush administration and Israel had an understanding under which Israel could expand settlements within their existing boundaries.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, Clinton sought to undercut his argument, saying there was no acknowledgment of any such agreement in the official negotiating record between Israel and the Bush administration.

"There is no memorialization of any informal and oral agreements. If they did occur, which of course people say they did, they did not become part of the official position of the United States government," Clinton said at a news conference with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

"And there are contrary documents that suggest that they were not to be viewed as in any way contradicting the obligations that Israel undertook pursuant to the road map." she added. "And those obligations are very clear."




By Arshad Mohammed, Reiters, June 5, 2009

Saying that 'the moment is now' to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, President Obama announces he is dispatching special envoy George Mitchell to the region.

Reporting from Washington, Dresden, Germany, and Jerusalem -- President Obama declared Friday that "the moment is now" to settle 60 years of conflict in the Middle East as he sought to stoke momentum for negotiations a day after his address in Cairo that both inspired hopes and rattled nerves across the region.

Obama announced that he was sending George J. Mitchell, his special Mideast envoy, on a mission to the area beginning Sunday. One of Mitchell's stops could be in Syria, which would mark a significant step in the U.S. effort to seek a comprehensive peace to the Arab-Israeli dispute.

"Less attention has been focused on the insistence on my part that the Palestinians and the Arab states have to take very concrete actions," he said.

Although Obama offered no new proposals on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the guidelines spelled out in his Cairo address crystallized an increasingly public breach between his administration and the Israeli leadership.

Obama and other U.S. officials have put Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the defensive over the last two weeks for refusing to embrace the goal of an independent Palestinian state and halt the growth of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

In Israel, there is a looming sense that Netanyahu will soon be forced to choose between two perilous alternatives: going along with Obama's vision for the Mideast and risking a revolt that could bring down his right-leaning governing coalition, or defying Israel's most powerful ally and pushing the Jewish state deeper into international isolation.

Though many Israelis support the government's positions on settlements and Palestinian sovereignty, they feel uneasy about alienating the United States, especially at a time when Netanyahu's top foreign policy priority is to confront Iran. Israeli officials quietly voiced irritation that Obama seemed to soften on Iran in his speech, which contained no warning that development of a nuclear weapon would lead to a military clash with the United States.

More friction

A new sign of tension over Jewish settlements appeared Friday. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Washington that there is no record that the George W. Bush administration secretly agreed to permit some growth in the enclaves. Israelis have cited such an agreement in response to Obama's demand that settlement activity be frozen.

"There is no memorialization of any informal and oral agreements," Clinton said in an appearance at the State Department. "If they did occur, which of course people say they did, they did not become part of the official position of the United States government."

A prominent conservative Israeli lawmaker rejected U.S. involvement in the issue.

"With all due respect to President Obama -- and there is respect -- and to the deep friendship between Israel and the United States, no foreign leader of another country will set policy in Judea and Samaria," Ofir Akonis, a member of parliament with Netanyahu's conservative Likud Party, told Army Radio. Judea and Samaria is an Israeli term for the West Bank.

Obama's remarks came on a day when he visited Buchenwald, the onetime Nazi concentration camp in Germany, where he praised the human spirit and honored Israel, which was founded in the postwar years.

Before that, Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke at a castle in Dresden, which was heavily bombed by the Allies in World War II and became a symbol of the destructive power of modern warfare.

The president also visited wounded U.S. troops at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a U.S. military hospital in Germany, awarding six Purple Heart medals to soldiers and Marines.

Today, the president visits France to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the D-day landing in Normandy.

His speech in Cairo built new pressure for talks that would settle the decades-old dispute between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Leaders on both sides acknowledged the significance of Obama's remarks, but offered measured responses on what they would mean.

Israelis welcomed his condemnation of Holocaust denial. They said he was right to tell Arab states that their own peace initiative was only "an important beginning," an implication that it needs modification to prevent millions of returning Palestinians from overwhelming the Jewish state. A key issue for Palestinians has been their assertion of a "right of return" to ancestors' homes in Israel.

But Israelis cringed when Obama associated the Palestinian struggle with the U.S. civil rights movement, questioned the "legitimacy" of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and referred to Israel as a "Jewish homeland" rather than a Jewish state. Both sides took offense at what they called his portrayal of their suffering as morally equivalent.

"He drew a shocking parallel between the elimination of Europe's Jews and the suffering that the Arabs of Israel brought upon themselves when they declared war against Israel," said Arieh Eldad, a right-wing member of Israel's parliament.

Palestinians faulted the speech as "lacking in practical policies and steps to support Palestinian sovereignty on our land," as Barhoum put it. Israeli officials, on the other hand, were relieved by their absence.

U.S. officials are expected to outline those policies in the weeks ahead.

"We're still very much in an embryonic stage with it, but trying to develop the issues and bring as many people into the tent, to bring about a comprehensive and long-lasting solution," said Gen. James L. Jones Jr., Obama's national security advisor.

He said Obama wanted to move as rapidly as possible.

Obama said Mitchell would follow up with "all the players in the region" in the coming week. State Department officials said Mitchell was considering a stop in Syria, one of the U.S. adversaries with which Obama has pledged talks.

Obama traveled to Buchenwald, outside the city of Weimar, with Merkel and Elie Wiesel, a Nobel laureate and survivor of the camps -- including Buchenwald, where his father died.

Speaking to a hushed crowd standing before the gates of the former camp, Wiesel said the Nazis' attempt to annihilate the Jews was just one genocide of the recent past. He listed Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Darfur.

Beneath a clock tower that perpetually reads 3:15, the hour of the camp's liberation by U.S. soldiers on April 11, 1945, Obama called the site "the ultimate rebuke" to those who would "tell lies about our history."

Obama emphasized personal reasons for his visit to Buchenwald. His great uncle, Charles Payne, as a young Army private helped to liberate a satellite camp at the end of World War II.





By Christi Parsons, Richard Boudreaux and Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times, June 6, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) - Activists and U.S. lawmakers looking to highlight the 20th anniversary of China's bloody crackdown at Tiananmen Square are finding their efforts overshadowed by the emergence of a China crucial to U.S. economic and diplomatic efforts around the world.

Washington has seen daily activities this week related to June 4, 1989, when China sent tanks and troops to crush demonstrations and shoot protesters seeking to remake the authoritarian Chinese system. There have been congressional hearings, appearances by the "Three Heroes of Tiananmen" and other activists, photo exhibits and candlelight vigils. On Thursday, dissidents and lawmakers rallied in front of the Capitol, calling on the U.S. government to provide more support for pro-democracy efforts in China.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement that China, as an emerging global power, "should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal."

But none of the commemorations of Tiananmen has demanded as much attention as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's trip to China this week to secure economic cooperation from the single-biggest holder of U.S. debt.

Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey criticized President Barack Obama for choosing the Tiananmen anniversary to make a major speech in Cairo meant as an outreach to Muslims. Obama and his administration should have been concentrating Thursday on sending China a forceful message on human rights and on the Tiananmen crackdown, Smith said at the Capitol rally.

"We should be talking about human rights," Smith said. "That should be our priority; after that comes the trade and the economic issues."

Beijing's importance to America was further underscored this week by a Chinese company's purchase of the unit of bankrupt General Motors Corp. that makes Hummer sport utility vehicles and by worsening tensions with North Korea, where Chinese leverage is seen as key to getting the North to return to nuclear disarmament talks.

As the United States works to secure cooperation from a powerful, economically dynamic China, it has become difficult for activists and lawmakers to draw attention to Tiananmen and to complaints that China abuses its citizens' rights.

Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in China's "laogai" labor camp system, said the Obama administration's position on China is understandable but frustrating.

The reason that events on Tiananmen are overshadowed, he said, is clear: "Because China is holding so much bonds. Because China became a major producer of the United States."

China holds an estimated $1 trillion in U.S. government debt.

Clinton has called the U.S.-China relationship the world's most important. In February, she angered activists and delighted China by saying during a trip to Beijing that the United States would not let its human rights concerns interfere with cooperation with Beijing on global crises.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, facing questions Wednesday about Clinton's comments in February, said human rights are "paramount on our list."

But Clinton is "communicating that we're not going to take a cookie-cutter approach to human rights," Crowley said. "She is interested in making sure that we address this in a way that is going to be most effective. In some cases, that will be public. In some cases, that will be private. In some cases, that will be both."

Beijing has never allowed an independent investigation into the military's crushing of the 1989 protests, in which possibly thousands of students, activists and ordinary citizens were killed.

By FOSTER KLUG, The Associated Press, June 4, 2009

BEIJING -- China aggressively deterred dissent in the capital on Thursday's 20th anniversary of the crackdown on democracy activists in Tiananmen Square. But tens of thousands turned out for a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong to mourn the hundreds, possibly thousands, of demonstrators killed.

The central government ignored calls from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and even Taiwan's China-friendly president for Beijing to face up to the 1989 violence.

In Beijing, foreign journalists were barred from the vast square as uniformed and plainclothes police stood guard across the area, which was the epicenter of the student-led movement that was crushed by the military on the night of June 3-4, 1989.

Security officials checking passports also blocked foreign TV camera operators and photographers from entering the square to cover the raising of China's national flag, which happens at dawn every day. Plainclothes officers confronted journalists on the streets surrounding the square, cursing and threatening violence against them.

The repression on the mainland contrasted starkly with Hong Kong, where organizers said 150,000 people gathered in the city's famous Victoria Park in the largest commemoration on Chinese soil. Police had no immediate crowd estimate.

A former British colony, the territory has retained its own legal system and open society since reverting to Chinese rule in 1997.

"It's time for China to take responsibility for the killings," said Kin Cheung, a 17-year-old Hong Kong student. "They need to tell the truth."

On the mainland, government censors shut down social networking and image-sharing Web sites such as Twitter and Flickr and blacked out CNN and other foreign news channels each time they aired stories about Tiananmen.

Dissidents and families of crackdown victims were confined to their homes or forced to leave Beijing, part of sweeping efforts to prevent online debate or organized commemorations of the anniversary.

"We've been under 24-hour surveillance for a week and aren't able to leave home to mourn. It's totally inhuman," said Xu Jue, whose son was 22 when he was shot in the chest by soldiers and bled to death on June 4, 1989.

Officers and police cars were also stationed outside the home of Wang Yannan, the daughter of Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party leader deposed for sympathizing with the pro-democracy protesters, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. Wang heads an auction firm and has never been politically active.

In a further sign of the government's intransigence, the second most-wanted student leader from 1989 was forced to return to Taiwan on Thursday after flying to the Chinese territory of Macau the day before in an attempt to return home.

Wu'er Kaixi, in exile since fleeing China after the crackdown, told The Associated Press by phone he was held overnight at the Macau airport's detention center and that being denied entry on the Tiananmen anniversary was a "tragedy."

The student leader who topped the most-wanted list, Wang Dan, was jailed for seven years before being expelled to the United States in 1998.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton said in a statement Wednesday that China, as an emerging global power, "should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal."

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou urged China to lift the taboo on discussing the crackdown.

"This painful chapter in history must be faced. Pretending it never happened is not an option," Ma said in a statement issued Thursday.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang attacked Clinton's comments as a "gross interference in China's internal affairs."

"We urge the U.S. to put aside its political prejudice and correct its wrongdoing and refrain from disrupting or undermining bilateral relations," Qin said in response to a question at a regularly scheduled news briefing. Qin refused to comment on the security measures _ or even acknowledge they were in place.

"Today is like any other day, stable," he said.

Beijing has never allowed an independent investigation into the military's crushing of the protests, in which possibly thousands of students, activists and ordinary citizens were killed. Young Chinese know little about the events, having grown up in a generation that has largely eschewed politics in favor of raw nationalism, wealth acquisition and individual pursuits.

Authorities tightened surveillance of China's dissident community ahead of the anniversary, with some leading writers under close watch or house arrest for months.

Ding Zilin, a retired professor and advocate for Tiananmen victims, said by telephone that a dozen officers have been blocking her and her husband from leaving their Beijing apartment.

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, The Associated Press, June 4, 2009

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday called on Beijing to publish the names of those killed or missing in the Tiananmen Square protests on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the crackdown.

"A China that has made enormous progress economically and is emerging to take its rightful place in global leadership should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal," Clinton said in a statement.

She also called on China to release prisoners still detained for taking part in the peaceful pro-democracy protests and end harassment of the Tiananmen Mothers, which is pressing to know more about missing loved ones.

"China can honor the memory of that day by moving to give the rule of law, protection of internationally recognized human rights and democratic development the same priority as it has given to economic reform," she said.

The US Congress made a similar appeal in a nearly unanimous resolution approved the day before.

China has kept a tight lid on information ahead of the anniversary, blacking out foreign TV reports about Beijing's crackdown on the protests which left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead.

The Chinese army forcibly cleared the vast square in central Beijing on the night of June 3-4, crushing student-led protests that had turned into a mass movement for democracy.

AFP, June 3, 2009

Despite Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's call to reduce the reliance on foreign aid contractors, the main U.S. aid agency is continuing to award multimillion-dollar contracts as it proposed to increase development spending in Afghanistan to $2.8 billion.

Clinton has dubbed past Afghanistan aid efforts a "heartbreaking" failure.

Last month, the U.S. Agency for International Development awarded a $150 million cooperative agreement to a partnership led by DAI, a Maryland company whose past Afghanistan contracts have been criticized by USAID's inspector general. The program is to promote alternatives to poppy crops.

An inspector general's audit released May 11 criticized DAI's performance on a $164 million contract to promote local governance. Success, the audit found, was "highly questionable" in part because DAI "had no overall strategy" for implementing local projects.

DAI was "acting to remedy what shortcoming (the audit) found," company spokesman Steven O'Connor said. DAI's poppy eradication program produced results in eastern Afghanistan, he said. A 2007 inspector general report cited achievements, but said DAI and USAID made mistakes that kept the program from working as well as it could.

USAID relies on contractors because it lacks the staff and technical expertise to implement aid programs itself. Although the administration is proposing to double the number of USAID employees over the next five years, that hiring has only just begun.

New hires will allow USAID and the State Department to reduce reliance on contractors, Jack Lew, deputy secretary of State in charge of management, told USA TODAY. At the same time, "We don't have a year to wait in Afghanistan, and frankly there are certain activities that we would never have enough government employees to do."

Lew said he and other senior officials are reviewing every contract "in a way that I don't believe has ever been done before." A "dramatic increase" in U.S. civilians on the ground in Afghanistan will enable better supervision of contracts, he said.

By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY, June 3, 2009

In a surprise move, the Organization of American States yesterday lifted its 47-year suspension of Cuba, with the U.S. government acquiescing but getting conditions on the communist country's full return to the group.

The U.S. delegation, headed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, had pressed hard for language that would delay the island's full membership until it agreed to honor democratic principles enshrined in OAS documents.

The resolution approved yesterday was more vague. It removed a 1962 ban on the country that cited its membership in the communist bloc. But it said Cuba could take its seat only after a process to ensure it was "in conformity with the practices, purposes and principles of the OAS."

Dan Restrepo, the top White House official for Western Hemisphere affairs, said the language was stronger than it might appear, because the preamble clearly included democracy and respect for human rights as fundamental OAS principles.

The net effect of the move appeared to be the removal of an irritant in the U.S. relationship with Latin America and the deferment of arguments about how Cuba might be readmitted.

"We have left an argument of the past in the past," he said, referring to the battle over lifting the 1962 suspension. "That allows us to focus on what's going on in the present and move to the future."

Reflecting the delicacy of the issue in U.S. politics, the OAS decision came under immediate fire from Cuban American legislators.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said in a statement that the move "allows for loose interpretation of what should be a clear set of fundamental democratic principles and standards" on human rights in the region.

Diplomats battled over the resolution for two days at the annual OAS assembly in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. The assembly is the main forum for political cooperation in the region The decision was largely symbolic, because Cuban officials have rejected the idea of returning to the OAS, which they label a U.S. tool.

But the clamor to lift the resolution shows how important the issue is to the hemisphere. Many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean see it is as a litmus test for the Obama administration's promises to work more closely with the region.

U.S. diplomats said they considered the resolution acceptable, especially because some countries had pressed to immediately readmit Cuba without conditions. The OAS normally works by consensus, but some had threatened to bring the matter to a vote.

Countries that had bashed the United States for its Cuba policies celebrated what they considered a strong symbolic victory.

"The Cold War ended today. Fidel Castro said more than 40 years ago that history would absolve him, and history absolved him," said Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.

By Mary Beth Sheridan, The Washington Post, June 4, 2009