US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday relentlessly hammered home the Obama administration’s message that the US is under new management and ready to listen and engage the world.
“When the United States is absent, people believe that we are not interested and that can create a vacuum that destructive forces can fill,” she told a group of journalists after meeting with Indonesia’s leader on the second leg of a weeklong Asia tour. “We don’t want to be absent. We want to be present.”
Earlier, she took to the airwaves, appearing on a popular youth show in the world’s most populous Muslim nation to deliver her message and bring greetings from US President Barack Obama, who spent part of his childhood there.
“There is so much excitement in the air here,” she told an enthusiastic studio audience on the MTV-style Dahsyat show, which translates in English to “Awesome.”
Clinton said she had just spoken with Obama, who wished them all well, drawing cheers.
Much of her appearance was lighthearted banter about her favorite music — the Beatles and the Rolling Stones — and her poor singing abilities, but she also made clear that Washington wants to address Muslim concerns about US policy in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Asked about the topic, which has deeply troubled Indonesians, Clinton took a shot at the Bush administration when explaining why she and Obama had appointed a special envoy to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict immediately after taking office.
“We felt like the United States had not been as active in trying to bring the parties together to resolve the conflict,” she said. “We’re going to work very hard to resolve what has been such a painful and difficult conflict for so many years.”
Clinton also said she would attend a donors’ pledging conference for rebuilding Gaza to be held in Egypt on March 2.
She met with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for 45 minutes yesterday, but made no official statement after the talks.
Yudhoyono’s spokesman, Dino Pati Djalal, said a formal invitation had been extended for Obama to visit, hopefully before the year’s end.
Though most of Indonesia’s 190 million Muslims practice a moderate form of the faith, public anger ran high over US policy in the Middle East and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years, fueling a small but increasingly vocal fundamentalist fringe. The country has been hit by a string of suicide bombings targeting Western interests in recent years, but experts say an effective police crackdown has sharply reduced the threat of terrorism.
Clinton praised Indonesia for its efforts to fight terrorism while respecting human rights and for its hard-won multiethnic democracy.
She also visited a poor neighborhood in central Jakarta that has received US assistance for maternal health and childcare, sanitation and water purification. Hundreds of people lined the narrow roads to greet her.
Earlier, she announced plans to restart Peace Corps programs in Indonesia that were suspended in 1965, after volunteers were accused of espionage and expelled.
Clinton was warmly received during her two-day visit, although small and scattered protests were held in several cities, with some Islamic hardliners setting tires on fire and others throwing shoes at caricatures of the top US diplomat.
After talks with Indonesian officials on Wednesday, Clinton said her choice of Asia for her first overseas trip as top US diplomat was “no accident” and a sign of a desire for broader and deeper relations with Indonesia and the rest of the continent on regional and global issues.
Clinton, who arrived from a stop in Japan, was to head later yesterday to South Korea and China.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
RSS