WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that the United States was now seeking "amnesty" for two American journalists imprisoned in North Korea, a remark that suggests that the Obama administration was admitting the women's culpability in a bid to secure their freedom.

"The two journalists and their families have expressed great remorse for this incident, and I think everyone is very sorry that it happened," Mrs. Clinton said Friday morning during a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with State Department employees. "What we hope for now is that these two young women would be granted amnesty through the North Korean system and be allowed to return home to their families as soon as possible."

The two journalists, Laura Ling, 36, and Euna Lee, 32, both reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor after a trial in which they were accused of entering the country illegally and committing "hostile acts."

Ms. Ling reportedly called her sister, Lisa Ling, also a journalist, this week and said in the course of a 20-minute conversation that they had broken North Korean law, but her sister did not say how. Human rights advocates in South Korea have said they were on a reporting assignment about the plight of North Korean women sold through human traffickers and refugees fleeing hunger in North Korea when they were detained March 17.

Mrs. Clinton at first said the charges against the women were "baseless," while the administration pressed for them to be freed on humanitarian grounds.

Her comments on Friday appear to reflect a changing picture that has been complicated by the North's test of a nuclear missile in May and its decision to fire seven ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan on the Fourth of July.

A scholar who visited the North said in an interview published Friday in a South Korean daily that the two women were not in a prison camp, but rather in a guest house in Pyongyang, a development that seemed to suggest that the North still wanted talks with Washington on the women's release.

The scholar, Han Park, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, was quoted by the JoongAng Ilbo as saying the North Korean authorities told him the two women were "staying well in a guest house in Pyongyang."

Mrs. Clinton's comments during a town-hall-style meeting at the State Department came in response to an employee who did not identify herself, creating the appearance that the question was planted in an attempt to send a message to North Korea.

A department spokesman, P. J. Crowley, avoided questions about whether the administration had been in direct talks with North Korea.

Experts said that Mrs. Clinton appeared to be trying to keep the issue of the journalists separate from the conflict over the North's nuclear ambitions.

"It's clear to me they don't want this tail to wag the nuclear dog," said Michael Green, a top Asia expert for former President George W. Bush. "They are trying to keep it in a separate lane."

But Mr. Green said the North was unlikely to release the women without getting something in return. Although North Korea does not expect the Obama administration to abandon its effort to impose sanctions on the North for its recent nuclear test, he said, it is likely to want a "high-profile visit" by an administration official to demonstrate that "it's possible to return to business as usual."

At a later appearance on Friday morning, Mrs. Clinton was asked if the State Department intended to send Professor Han as an emissary. "We have nothing to respond to about that," she said.

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, The New York Times, July 10, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the United States may call for "stricter sanctions" against Iran if U.S. diplomatic efforts with Tehran fail.

Clinton commented late Tuesday in an an exclusive interview with Venezuela's Globovision TV.

She responded to a question about how she perceived relations between Iran and Venezuela by saying "Iran has not respected its own democracy."

The Secretary of State referred to Iran's crackdown on demonstrators who opposed the results of the June presidential elections, which gave the victory to incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Clinton also said the U.S. is concerned about Iran's effort to develop nuclear weapons, which she says could destabilize the Middle East. Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is intended to produce electricity.

Clinton said if the "policy of careful engagement" with Iran failed, the U.S. may "ask the world" to join in imposing more sanctions.

Iran has already been hit with three sets of United Nations sanctions for its refusal to stop enriching uranium, a process that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, the political crisis in Iran is among the issues expected to be discussed Wednesday at a meeting in Italy of leaders of the world's eight major industrial countries.

U.S. President Barack Obama is attending the G-8 meeting, which also includes Germany, Japan, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia.





Voice of America, July 8, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Tuesday renewed the U.S. call on all parties in China's troubled Xinjiang region to exercise restraint after ethnic unrest. More than 150 people have been reported killed in clashes mainly between Chinese security forces and Muslim Uighurs.

Clinton's call for restraint, at a State Department press event, was the highest-level U.S. appeal thus far on the unrest in Xinjiang, which erupted Sunday with rioting in the regional capital of Urumqi.

In the unrest, the worst reported outbreak of ethnic violence in China in decades, thousands of Uighurs - who have complained of discriminatory treatment by Beijing authorities - clashed with police and troops.

Trouble reportedly flared again Tuesday when crowds of Han Chinese took to the streets of Urumqi calling for revenge against Uighurs.

The official Chinese news media have reported at least 156 deaths and more than a thousand injuries but Uighur exile groups say the toll was probably higher. China also reported more than 1,400 arrests.

Secretary Clinton, who begins a trip next week to South and East Asia, said the United States is deeply concerned by the casualty reports.

"We are trying to sort out, as best we can the facts and circumstances from the region," said Hillary Clinton. "And we're calling on all sides to exercise restraint. We know there's a long history of tension and discontent, but the most immediate matter is to bring the violence to a conclusion."

The State Department says U.S. diplomats have expressed concern about the situation with Chinese officials in Beijing, and that the matter was raised in Washington Monday with visiting Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Wu Dawei

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi attributed the violence to harsh policies in Xinjiang and said it is long past time for Chinese leaders to pursue dialogue and understanding with the Muslims in western China and respect minority rights.

Several Chinese officials have accused U.S.-based Uighur exile Rebiya Kadeer of masterminding the rioting. State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly Tuesday declined comment on the charges. Kadeer herself has told reporters she advocates self-determination for China's Muslim minority but has done nothing to foment unrest.





By David Gollust, Voice of America, July 7, 2009

WASHINGTON - The ousted president of Honduras nd the leader who has succeeded him in the nation's d'e facto government agreed Tuesday for the first time to negotiate a resolution to the political crisis polarizing their country.

At the end of her first meeting with the deposed Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the talks would be led by President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is considered one of the region's most accomplished statesmen.

While Secretary Clinton reiterated the United States' condemnation of Mr. Zelaya's ouster, she stopped short of calling for his reinstatement, a departure from statements by President Obama earlier Tuesday and from the position taken by much of the international community.

When asked whether the United States viewed Mr. Zelaya's return as central to the restoration of democratic order, she said that she did not want to "prejudge" the talks before they began.

"There are many different issues that will have to be discussed and resolved," Mrs. Clinton said. "But I think it's fair to let the parties themselves, with President Arias's assistance, sort out all of these issues."

A senior administration official said that Mr. Arias, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for negotiating an end to conflicts that plagued Central America during the cold war, began quietly laying the groundwork to mediate the Honduran talks last week when it became clear that efforts by the Organization of American States had only hardened the resolve on both sides.

At the same time, the official said, United States diplomats, along with their counterparts from Canada, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Colombia, also began discussing the need for an outside mediator. The crucial turning point, said several officials close to the deliberations, came Sunday, when Mr. Zelaya's attempt to return to Honduras set off deadly demonstrations outside its main airport.

That afternoon, officials said, Roberto Micheletti, the head of the de facto government, issued an urgent call for negotiations. On Monday he dispatched a delegation of businessmen, legislators and other civil servants to Washington and reached out to Mr. Arias.

Aides to Mr. Arias called Mrs. Clinton's office to see whether the United States would support his mediation. And on Tuesday, she presented the plan to Mr. Zelaya. Officials said that before endorsing the idea, Mr. Zelaya asked to speak with Mr. Arias himself, and that the State Department facilitated the call.

Mrs. Clinton characterized her meeting with Mr. Zelaya as "positive." An official who attended the session said Mr. Zelaya added a moment of levity to the meeting, making light of how soldiers rousted him from his home early in the morning and put him on a plane leaving the country.

"What have Latin American presidents learned from Honduras?" he asked Mrs. Clinton.

As the secretary shook her head, Mr. Zelaya smiled and said, "To sleep with our clothes on and our bags packed."

In Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, Mr. Zelaya's wife made her first public appearance since her husband's ouster, joining hundreds of demonstrators in a march to the American Embassy, where they praised the Obama administration for refusing to recognize the de facto government.

"We see here the real people," said Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, addressing a crowd made up of union members, farmers and other members of the working class.

Meanwhile, thousands of flag-waving opponents of Mr. Zelaya gathered downtown, and hung pinatas bearing the faces of Mr. Zelaya and the leftist leaders of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia.

"What we're saying today is we want to be united," said Juan Diego Zelaya, a candidate for deputy mayor from the conservative National Party. "This is not rich versus poor."

From Washington, Mrs. Clinton urged Hondurans on all sides to remain calm.

"Our goal has been to reach the point where we are now," she said, "which is to get the parties talking to each other, and not through us or third parties."

Mr. Zelaya, a close ally of the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, has been accused of flouting the law in an effort to amend the Constitution so he can run for re-election. His opponents - who include a broad cross-section of Honduran society - said those charges led to his ouster.

Still, speaking from Russia early Tuesday, President Obama said there was a greater principle at stake: "America supports now the restoration of the democratically elected president of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies."

By Ginger Thompson and Marc Lacey, The New York Times, July 7, 2009

Iran's crackdown on dissent over the June 12 election suggests the leadership may be unwilling to consider curbing its nuclear ambitions, a position that would prompt the U.S. to call for tougher international sanctions, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

"Even though we are cautiously pursuing a policy of engagement, we are doing it with our eyes open," Clinton said in an interview with Venezuela's Globovision network. "We understand that, given the problems Iran has just demonstrated, it may not be possible -- in which case we would ask the world to join us in imposing even stricter sanctions on Iran to try to change the behavior of the regime."

Iran will hold trials for some 500 people arrested during protests over the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Prosecutor General Qorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi was cited as saying today by state-run Press TV. They were among hundreds of thousands of opponents who took to the streets, alleging last month’s vote was rigged. About 2,000 others detained over the rallies have been released, Dorri-Najafabadi said.

Authorities used force against the demonstrators, many of them supporters of the main election challenger, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi. As many as 20 people were killed, according to state-run media, while Le Figaro yesterday cited hospital staff members in Tehran as saying at least 92 died.

Ahmadinejad has increased tensions with the West since taking office in August 2005, pursuing a nuclear program that the U.S. and several major allies say is a cover for weapons development. Iran says the work is peaceful and intended to generate electricity. The country is under three sets of United Nations Security Council sanctions for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.

'Nuclear Weapons'

"We obviously are concerned about Iran's regime, the pursuit of nuclear weapons, which would be very destabilizing in the Middle East and beyond, the support for terrorism that Iran still pursues," Clinton said in the interview, which was televised in Venezuela late yesterday.

The violent suppression of election protests shows that "Iran has not respected its own democracy," she said.

Iran's diplomatic ties have been further strained since the crackdown, jeopardizing the prospect of talks with the West on the nuclear program. Nine Iranian employees of the U.K. Embassy in Tehran were arrested after being accused of fomenting post- election unrest for Britain. The 27-member European Union summoned Iranian ambassadors after a senior cleric said on July 3 that some of the workers would be tried.

'Grave Concern'

Six United Nations experts on human rights expressed "grave concern about reports of killings, ongoing arrests, use of excessive police force and the ill treatment of detainees." The experts, who include Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak, urged the government in Tehran to uphold its obligations under international law to protect human rights, according to a joint statement issued yesterday.

The nuclear program has been portrayed by Ahmadinejad's administration as a source of national pride and a necessity for Iran's progress. Strategic decisions on the undertaking are ultimately the responsibility of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said on July 6 that meddling over the election result by Western countries will have a negative impact on their future relations with Iran.

Ahmadinejad hit out at world powers in a televised speech late yesterday, railing against their "interference and childish acts" and promising that Iran "will not back down in seeking its deserved position and rights," the state-run Fars news agency reported.

EU Envoys

The EU has sent envoys to talk with Iran about its nuclear program. The U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980, after the Islamic Revolution that brought Shiite Muslim clerics to power.

President Barack Obama urged Iran in a March 20 video message to opt for peace over "terror or arms" and forge diplomatic ties with the world. Obama acknowledged there are "serious differences" between the U.S. and Iran, and said his administration wants to engage in diplomacy that addresses the "full range of issues" between the nations.

By Ali Sheikholeslami, Bloomberg, July 8, 2009

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was to meet here Tuesday with Honduran leader Manuel Zelaya, in his highest level talks with the Obama administration since being ousted in an army-backed coup.

The State Department said the meeting was scheduled for 1:00 pm (1700 GMT) at Clinton's offices in the State Department building in Washington, but no media access is being granted.

During a visit to Nicaragua on Monday, Zelaya said he would travel later in the evening to Washington for talks with Clinton.

Zelaya met last week with Tom Shannon, the assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, on the sidelines of an Organization of American States (OAS) talks in Washington, US officials said.

He did not meet either with Clinton, who was working at home that day to recover from a broken elbow, or with President Barack Obama.

On Sunday, he flew from Washington to Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, aboard a Venezuelan plane, in an abortive attempt to return after being hastily ousted on June 28.

The interim government deployed troops at the airport and prevented him from landing. He later flew to Nicaragua.

The meeting with Clinton will be the highest-level contact between Zelaya and the Obamas administration since the coup, when troops arrested the leftist leader in a dawn raid on his home and expelled him in his pajamas from the country.

In trying to return Zelaya to power, the United States has been working with the OAS, which late Saturday suspended Honduras from its ranks.

AFP, July 7, 2009

MOSCOW, July 6 (UPI) -- The presidents of the United States and Russia Monday created a bilateral presidential commission to broaden the countries' cooperation on a number of issues.

"Too often, the United States and Russia only communicate on a narrow range of issues or let old habits within our bureaucracy stand in the way of our progress," U.S. President Barack Obama said during a joint news conference in Moscow with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. "And that's why this commission will include working groups on development and the economy, energy and the environment, nuclear energy and security, arms control and international security, defense, foreign policy and counterterrorism, preventing and handling emergencies, civil society, science and technology, space, health, education and culture."

The commission will be coordinated by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Obama said. Clinton will travel to Russia as part of the effort.

United Press International, July 6, 2009

Former first cat Socks, the pet of President Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, has been laid to rest at the Arkansas Governor's Mansion in Little Rock. A portion of the black-and-white cat's ashes were scattered in a flower garden on the west side of the mansion in the spring, according to the Northwest Arkansas Morning News.

When the Clintons lived at the mansion, "that's where Socks hung out, on the back porch there," Ron Maxwell, the mansion's administrator, told the Morning News. A small plaque placed on the porch notes that Socks was Arkansas' first cat from 1991 to 1993 and America's first cat from 1993 to 2001. The urn that once held his ashes now sits in the Clinton Presidential Library; Maxwell called it "an interesting oddity for kids and whoever is interested in the cat."

Socks joined the Clinton family in 1991 and accompanied the Clintons to the White House. During his tenure as first cat, he was perhaps the most talked-about cat in the country, although his public status was somewhat diminished when the Clintons brought home a chocolate Labrador retriever, Buddy. The first cat and first dog got along like -- well, you know -- and Clinton once famously told CNN, "I did better with the Arabs -- the Palestinians and the Israelis -- than I have done with Socks and Buddy." (Socks was also commemorated, somewhat weirdly, on a set of Central African Republic stamps.)

When Clinton left office, Socks was sent to live with the former presidential secretary, Betty Currie, with whom he remained until his death. Last December, he was reported to be gravely ill with cancer. The Currie family had apparently decided to forgo keeping him alive with a feeding tube, fearing that, at 19, he was too old for such treatment. He was eventually euthanized in February to end his suffering, after which Currie told a reporter she was "miserable, miserable, miserable." Bill and Hillary Clinton released a statement saying they were "grateful" for happy memories of Socks and thanking Currie for taking good care of him in his final years.

By Lindsay Barnett, Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2009

Efforts Intensified To Resolve Crisis

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has agreed to meet with ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, as U.S. and other diplomats intensify their efforts to solve a crisis that has turned into a showdown with coup leaders and threatens to produce more bloodshed.

The meeting could take place as early as today, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Zelaya told reporters he was flying to Washington last night from Central America.

The talks took on additional urgency after two Zelaya supporters were killed Sunday during a boisterous demonstration at the airport in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, where the de facto government denied permission for Zelaya's plane to land. The plane circled the airport twice, then flew on to Nicaragua.

The Clinton meeting would mark the highest-level contact between Zelaya and the Obama administration since the June 28 coup, when the military detained the leftist leader and expelled him from the country. The Obama administration has condemned the coup. But until now, Clinton has worked behind the scenes, consulting with foreign ministers from Mexico and other countries as the U.S. government publicly coordinated its efforts through the Organization of American States (OAS).

The Honduran crisis has presented the biggest test yet of the Obama administration's Latin America policy, which seeks to establish more cooperative relations in a region where the United States wields enormous influence.

Peter Hakim, director of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank, said it was crucial for the U.S. government to show leadership in resolving the crisis.

"The worst thing is to create a long-term situation where you have an extraordinarily polarized politics, and a sort of residue of distrust, that prevents the holding of free, fair and credible elections come November," he said. A successor to Zelaya was scheduled to be chosen in a November vote.

The military forced Zelaya out after he defied Supreme Court orders and promoted a nonbinding referendum that many thought could lead to a constitutional change eliminating the one-term limit for presidents.

Senior U.S. officials declined to provide details on what Clinton's message to Zelaya would be, beyond emphasizing the need for democratic and constitutional order in Honduras.

Four witnesses said yesterday that Honduran troops fatally shot a protester, Isi Obed Murillo, 19, who was at the airport awaiting Zelaya's return Monday. Murillo's sister Rebeca said her brother was among a group that tore down a flimsy chain-link fence leading to the airstrip. As they did so, soldiers began firing their automatic rifles.

"He was too young, my brother. Why did they take his life? I cannot believe it," she said. The second protester who died was identified as Mario René Ramon Elvir, 39.

Stephen Ferry, an American photojournalist, said the troops had not been provoked. "There had been no rock-throwing at that point, and no one had attempted to enter the tarmac either," said Ferry, who was photographing the crowd when the gunshots rang out. He said one soldier methodically fired into the crowd, taking careful aim and shooting off one burst of automatic fire after another.

Honduras's de facto government intensified its efforts to reach a resolution to the crisis yesterday, forming a four-person commission to open negotiations with the OAS, according to a senior Honduran official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He said the commission was expected to hold talks with OAS officials and representatives of member countries.

The OAS suspended the Central American country early Sunday after giving it 72 hours to reinstate Zelaya.

The government of Roberto Micheletti, the de facto president, says that Zelaya's return is not negotiable and insists that his ouster was legal. His return to power is opposed by the military and the National Congress, while impoverished supporters of the populist leader have clamored for his reinstatement.

An unofficial Honduran delegation, including former president Ricardo Maduro and other former senior Honduran officials, arrived in Washington seeking to explain the ouster of Zelaya to U.S. lawmakers, officials and journalists.

"They come here because they feel that the multilateral organizations have not given Honduras a chance to express itself. There has been a blockage of communication with my country," said Roberto Flores-Bermúdez, Honduras's ambassador to Washington, who is helping the group.

But two sources in Honduras said the idea behind sending the team is to open a channel of communication between Micheletti and the Obama administration, which like other governments in the hemisphere has refused to recognize him.

Elan Reyes Pineda, who is president of the Honduras College of Journalists and is close to government officials, said the delegation has "official characteristics" because it is reporting back to Micheletti and testing the political winds in Washington for the de facto government.

"They're going to talk about why they went this route, what some call a coup and what others call a transition," Pineda said.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said she would meet with Maduro today and host a members' briefing with him Wednesday.

By Mary Beth Sheridan and Juan Forero, The Washington Post, July 7, 2009

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who broke her right elbow two weeks ago, will not accompany President Barack Obama to Moscow next week, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.

"Secretary Clinton is not going to go to Moscow," the official told reporters, saying Clinton would name a State Department official to replace her on the Monday-to-Wednesday trip.

The official declined to explain why she would not travel and it was not immediately clear whether it was because of her injury. Clinton tripped and fell in the State Department on June 17 and had surgery two days later on her right elbow.

The official, who spoke on condition he not be identified, said Clinton planned to travel to Asia later in the month, when she is expected to visit India and possibly Thailand.

Arms control is likely to top the agenda in Moscow and diplomats believe Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev would agree on the outline of a deal to reduce the stocks of deployed nuclear warheads to below 1,700 on each side.

On Monday, Clinton held a news conference with her arm in a sling and said that the injury was still painful. "I'm engaged in a different form of arms control," she joked.

By David Storey, Reuters, July 1, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, still ailing from a broken elbow, has canceled plans to join President Obama on his upcoming trip to Russia, the State Department said today.

The trip is the second in as many weeks that the well-traveled Clinton has scrubbed since she slipped and broke her elbow while headed to a meeting at the White House on June 17. She underwent two hours of surgery on June 19, and since then kept up a sporadic public schedule, frequently working from home.

"She's in some pain," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters yesterday. "She had a very serious break in her elbow.... She's energetic, she's fully engaged, but we need to make sure that she heals and then can get back to a full schedule where she can come in every day."

Clinton, 61, appeared at the State Department on Monday, but was at home on Tuesday. Today, she presided at the swearing-in ceremony of Daniel Rooney, the Pittsburgh Steelers owner who Obama tapped as ambassador to Ireland. "I came off the injured reserve list," she quipped to laughter.




By Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post, July 1, 2009

President Obama said yesterday that the military ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and could set a "terrible precedent," but Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States government was holding off on formally branding it a coup, which would trigger a cutoff of millions of dollars in aid to the impoverished Central American country.

Clinton's statement appeared to reflect the U.S. government's caution amid fast-moving events in Honduras, where Zelaya was detained and expelled by the military on Sunday. The United States has joined other countries throughout the hemisphere in condemning the coup. But leaders face a difficult task in trying to restore Zelaya to office in a nation where the National Congress, military and Supreme Court have accused him of attempting a power grab through a special referendum.

Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, said the situation presented a dilemma for the United States and other countries. Zelaya is "fighting with all the institutions in the country," Hakim said. "He's in no condition really to govern. At the same time, to stand by and allow him to be pushed out by the military reverses a course of 20 years."

U.S. officials had tried ahead of time to avert the coup, warning the Honduran military and politicians against suspending democratic order. The U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sheltered one of Zelaya's children to prevent him from being harmed, according to Carlos Sosa, Honduras's ambassador to the Organization of American States.

But the Obama administration has had cool relations with Zelaya, a close ally of Venezuela's anti-American president, Hugo Chavez. While U.S. officials say they continue to recognize Zelaya as president, they have not indicated they are willing to use the enormous U.S. clout in the country to force his return.

Asked whether it was a U.S. priority to see Zelaya reinstalled, Clinton said: "We haven't laid out any demands that we're insisting on, because we're working with others on behalf of our ultimate objectives."

John D. Negroponte, a former senior State Department official and ambassador to Honduras, said Clinton's remarks appeared to reflect U.S. reluctance to see Zelaya returned unconditionally to power.

"I think she wants to preserve some leverage to try and get Zelaya to back down from his insistence on a referendum," he said.

Zelaya clashed with the Honduran Congress, Supreme Court and military in recent weeks, particularly over his promotion of a referendum that might have permitted him to run for another four-year term. The Congress and Supreme Court said the referendum was illegal.

The Congress overwhelmingly voted to depose Zelaya after he had been forcibly removed. Lawmakers then named a new president, Roberto Micheletti, from the same party.

Obama repeated yesterday that the United States viewed Zelaya as Honduras's president and that "the coup was not legal."

"It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections," he told reporters after a meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

Clinton told reporters that the situation in Honduras had "evolved into a coup" but that the United States was "withholding any formal legal determination" characterizing it that way.

"We're assessing what the final outcome of these actions will be," she said. "Much of our assistance is conditioned on the integrity of the democratic system. But if we were able to get to a status quo that returned to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time, I think that would be a good outcome."

The Obama administration has pledged to work more closely with Latin America and not dictate policy in its traditional back yard. But the United States has several points of leverage: It is Honduras's biggest trading partner, and President Obama has requested $68 million in development and military aid for 2010. Portions of that aid, which are provided directly to the government, would be cut off in the event of a coup. Congressional officials said last night they were not sure exactly how much that amounted to. Honduras also is a recipient of a five-year, $215 million Millennium Challenge grant that is conditioned on the country remaining a democracy.

The United States also has a close military relationship with Honduras. Hundreds of Honduran officers participate in U.S. military training programs each year, more than most other Western Hemisphere countries.

Among those who have attended such training is the senior military officer of Honduras, Gen. Romeo Vasquez, who was dismissed by Zelaya prior to the coup. After that dismissal, other senior Honduran military leaders resigned, including the Air Force commander, Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo.

Vasquez attended the Pentagon-run School of the Americas in 1976 and 1984, and Suazo attended in 1996, according to Army records of graduates obtained by a watchdog group. A spokesman for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which replaced the School of the Americas in 2001, said the records of graduates obtained by the group, School of Americas Watch, are accurate.

"We have a strong military relationship with them and in . . . military exchange training that takes place, we emphasize civilian control of the military" as well as human rights and the rule of law, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.

A contingent of about 600 U.S. military personnel is based at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras as part of Joint Task Force Bravo, which mainly supports disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping and counternarcotics activities in Honduras and the region.

The Organization of American States has summoned the hemisphere's foreign ministers to Washington to discuss the crisis. Clinton said the United States is pushing for a delegation to be sent to Honduras after the session.

The United States has been a strong backer of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, a document signed by OAS members in 2001 that commits them to observe the "right to democracy." Violators can be suspended from the organization.

OAS members issued a statement calling for "the immediate, safe and unconditional return" of Zelaya to the presidency.





By Mary Beth Sheridan, The Washington Post, June 30, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged President Obama for two days to toughen his language on Iran before he did so.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged President Obama for two days to toughen his language on Iran before he did so, and then was surprised when he condemned Iran's crackdown on demonstrators last week, the Washington Times reported administration officials as saying.

At his June 23 news conference, Obama said he was "appalled and outraged" by Iranian behavior and "strongly condemned" the violence against anti-government demonstrators. Up until then, Obama and other administration officials had taken a softer line, expressing "deep concern" about the situation and calling on Iran to "respect the dignity of its own people."

Behind the scenes, the officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing internal deliberations, said Clinton had been advocating the stronger U.S. response, but the president resisted. When he finally took her advice, the aides said, he did so without informing her first.

This was the first known example of awkwardness between the two former rivals for the Democratic nomination for president since they made up following Obama's election. The disagreement also gave some insight into the Obama administration's foreign policy decision-making process five months into its term.

The officials said they were familiar with the language Obama used in his news conference because it was sent to the State Department a day earlier, but that Clinton did not know until he uttered the words that he would choose that moment to make them public.

The Washington Times, July 01, 2009