On The Plane | washingtonpost.com

Posted at 3:27 PM ET, 04/26/2009

Clinton Keeps Up an Active Pace Overseas

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Secretaries of state tend to be a hardy lot, with long days of negotiations, meetings and receptions.

But Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton may be in a category of her own.

On her latest Middle East trip, the secretary, her staff and reporters boarded a 7:30 am plane from Kuwait to Iraq on Saturday. In a 12-hour visit, she met with US military brass, several Iraqi officials, U.N. envoys, war widows, U.S. diplomats -- and held a campaign-style town hall meeting.

Clinton arrived back in Kuwait shortly before midnight -- just in time to preside at a lavish dinner for her staff and guests, plus the rather bedraggled reporters.

No sign how she kept up the pace, although she did gulp a tiny cup of thick Arabic coffee as the evening ended, about six hours before she was due to head for her next stop, Beirut.

Posted at 8:33 AM ET, 04/25/2009

Clinton's 'Red Carpet Treatment' En Route to Iraq

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton flew into Kuwait on Friday on Air Force 2, a top-of-the-line jet featuring leather seats, TV monitors and dinner served on china with silverware and cloth napkins.

For her hour-long hop to Baghdad on Saturday, however, the frills were gone.

Clinton, her State Department staff and a dozen journalists boarded an Air Force C-17 cargo jet, a hulking windowless gray workhorse, whose interior resembled a giant garage. Several rows of seats were plopped down in the middle of the cargo area.

Passengers stuffed in ear plugs because of the roar of the engines.

Once on board, staff and reporters grabbed sweaty body armor from a mound in the back of the aircraft, and practiced strapping on helmets.

It looked like the kind of wartime scenario that Clinton evoked during her campaign when she described landing amid sniper fire in Bosnia--a story she subsequently acknowledged was exaggerated.

But the Baghdad landing turned out to be quiet. Clinton got red-carpet treatment as she descended from the plane, with greetings from U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and Adm. Mike Mullen, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And her motorcade zipped into the city on roads cleared of their normally chock-a-block traffic.

Posted at 5:32 AM ET, 04/ 1/2009

Clinton Reveals Small Contacts With Iran

By Glenn Kessler
THE HAGUE--As the day wore on at the international conference on Afghanistan Tuesday, it was looking pretty grim for the reporters covering Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The high-minded speeches by foreign ministers on helping Afghanistan were not the reason many of the reporters had made the trip. We came mainly because this was the first opportunity for Clinton to cross paths with Iranian officials. The Obama administration has made outreach to Tehran a top priority, and anticipation ran high that something might happen. After all, when Clinton announced the plans for the conference a few weeks ago, the invite to Iran was the top news out of the announcement.

But nothing seemed to be happening. Clinton and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Mehdi Akhundzadeh were seated at the same horse-shaped table, but the table was long and narrow. In fact, the table looked more like a test tube--and Clinton was at one end and Akhundzadeh was on the other side and about 30 seats away. They could barely wave to each other if they had wanted to.

The Dutch put on a rather efficient show, given the few weeks' notice, with perfectly working computer wires and an endless supply of tasty (and free) food for the reporters. But the high hopes for an Iranian-American meeting were fading.

Then super-diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke saved the day. Somehow Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, maneuvered his way into talking with Akhundzadeh. Clinton felt compelled the confirm the encounter, adding that it "did not focus on anything substantive. It was cordial, it was unplanned and they agreed to stay in touch."

Clinton herself also dispatched an aide to deliver an unsigned document to the Iranian delegation concerning the fate of three Americans in Iran. Usually, such communications between the two countries are handled through the Swiss government because Iran and the United States do not have diplomatic relations.

Interestingly, Clinton only revealed this development in response to a question at a news conference. She kept her prepared remarks squarely focused on Afghanistan, perhaps knowing full well that virtually every question from reporters would concern Iran.

Clinton's staff declined to provide many details about either the Holbrooke meeting or the document tranfer. They would not say who delivered the aide-memoire to the Iranian delegation, when it was delivered or why a decision was made to approach Iran in this way. They also would not provide any details about Holbrooke's discussion, including how long it lasted.

Akhundzadeh later denied there was ever a meeting with Holbrooke, though that may depend on the definition of "meeting." Clinton herself called it a "brief and cordial exchange."

In any event, the reporters suddenly had a story to justify the travel with Clinton. And if the administration had any doubt about whether news crews are highly interested in its outreach to Iran, those doubts have been put to rest.

Programming note: We're off the plane. Clinton flew Tuesday night to join President Obama in London for his tour of Europe, but the diplomatic reporters stayed behind and are flying home by commercial jet. Once the secretary of state joins the president, the White House correspondents pick up the story--and future posts about their travel will appear on our presidential blog, 44.

Posted at 5:52 PM ET, 03/30/2009

The Waiting Game: Is the Third Time a Charm?

By Glenn Kessler
THE HAGUE, March 30 -- What's going to happen when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and a senior diplomat from the Islamic Republic of Iran find themselves in the same room?

Perhaps nothing. But anticipation is running high after Iran decided to accept an invitation to attend a conference on Afghanistan. It is the first opportunity for a high-level diplomatic encounter between Iran and the new administration. President Obama has indicated he is very interested in improving relations with Tehran.

The Bush administration had little interest in warmer ties and even appeared to have an unspoken policy of regime change. But even so, both of Clinton's predecessors, Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, at one point found themselves in the same room with their Iranian counterparts during international conferences.

Powell, in November 2004, was seated next to the then-Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, during dinner at a conference on Iran at Sharm el-Sheikh, a maneuver engineered by mischievous Egyptian hosts. Powell by then was a lame duck secretary of state, and not much happened. The two shook hands and exchanged polite dinner conversation, comparing notes on grandchildren and the like.

Things didn't go quite as swimmingly for Rice. During another meeting on Iraq in Sharm el-Sheikh, in May 2007, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was to be seated directly across from Rice over dinner, but when he realized that, he walked out. He claimed a female Russian violinist at the dinner was dressed too revealingly and he refused to be there.

"I don't know which woman he was afraid of, the woman in the red dress or the secretary of state," Rice's spokesman Sean McCormack later quipped.

No dinner is scheduled for Tuesday's conference. But there will be a lunch.

Posted at 9:28 AM ET, 03/ 7/2009

Hitting the Wrong Button

By Glenn Kessler
ANKARA, Turkey, March 7--Diplomacy often is about shades of gray. And symbols, as well as substance, are all part of the game.

So what happens when you throw a gimmick into the mix, a stunt more akin to a primary campaign? It's a bit daring and just might work. But careful attention to detail is important.

The Clinton team learned that lesson the hard way when, before a crucial meeting in Geneva Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented her Russian counterpart with a mock "reset button"--with the wrong Russian word emblazoned on the device. Instead of "reset," it said "overcharge" or "overload," as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov quickly pointed out.

The concept was clever--it was intended to symbolize the U.S. desire to "reset" the relationship with Russia--but the execution was sloppy. The idea of the gift was a bit of a last-minute thing, which is unusual given that Clinton was headed into a high-stakes encounter. State Department officials back in Washington were simultaneously amused and appalled.

Clinton, to her credit, made the best of the situation. Lavrov's quick identification of the error earned a full-throated laugh from the secretary. Lavrov, who often wields a diplomatic stiletto, then made a mocking reference to the mistake in the post-meeting news conference.

Continue reading this post »

Posted at 7:06 AM ET, 03/ 6/2009

Always Late, Ever the Crowd-Pleaser

By Glenn Kessler
BRUSSELS, March 6--Nothing starts on time in Hillaryland.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is late to nearly every meeting and event on her schedule, and today's "town hall" with European Parliament interns and young professionals was no exception. The overflow crowd of hundreds of people was seated long before the official start time. And then they waited. And waited.

Reporters traveling with her have learned that no matter how many of Clinton's staff gather before an event, Clinton will not be seen until her well-tailored aide, Huma Abedin, appears. Abedin, who is Clinton's deputy chief of staff, will walk smartly to the podium, carrying a blue folder containing a set of prepared talking points. Moments later, Clinton will walk into the room.

For the town hall, Abedin, and Clinton, materialized about a half hour behind schedule.

Once Clinton showed up, she had the audience eating out of her hands. The lovefest began immediately, with a standing ovation. One man was wearing a t-shirt that declared, "I [heart] Hillary." She couldn't resist letting him ask a question.

Hans-Gerd Poettinger, president of the parliament, set the tone when he lauded Clinton and the new Obama administration, declaring that the election of Obama "has given new hope to the world."

The queries were much more substantive than many of her previous town halls on the road--covering such issues as Israeli settlement expansion, climate change, terrorism, homosexual rights, relations with Russia and European democracy. Clinton handled them with aplomb.

She even turned a somewhat convoluted question on European democracy into a plea for an end to constant debate, and political process, that does not result in action. "Democracy that does not deliver for people will be undermined by the very people it is intended to serve," Clinton said, saying there was "a leadership crisis in the world."

Her one slight misstep came when she noted that "our democracy has been around far longer than European democracy." She was likely referring to pan-European democracy--she was standing in the European parliament, after all--but the crowd noticeably stirred and many people appear annoyed. You could sense they thought it was typical American bluster. (Ever heard of the Magna Carta?)

Clinton seemed to content to keep taking questions until she got a signal from her anxious staff that--again--she was running way over schedule. Before she left, Poettinger gave her what he considered the highest compliment, saying a European could not have given better answers. And the crowd gave her yet another standing ovation.

Posted at 6:25 AM ET, 03/ 5/2009

For Clinton, Fewer Crowds in Mideast than Far East

By Glenn Kessler
BRUSSELS, March 5--Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has tried to make public outreach an important part of her busy diplomatic schedule, hoping to get outside the grand halls and meeting rooms of foreign governments and actually talk to ordinary people.

But on this Mideast trip, her outreach campaign has not been nearly as successful as her boffo Asian tour last month. There, the former first lady and New York senator spoke to crowds huge (more than 2,000 students at a women's university in Seoul) and small (an intimate gathering of women activists in China.) Clinton's overseas appeal was readily apparent, and she garnered impressive news coverage.

Not so on this trip. In Israel, Clinton met with a handful of women entrepreneurs and representatives of a nongovernmental organization, but it was an awkward event and Clinton was clearly tired. And since the event was unconnected to the administration's peace efforts, which is what reporters in the Mideast focus on, it generated no news coverage.

In the Palestinian territories, Clinton visited a student program supported by U.S. funds. About 15 students sat around in a circle working on a vocabulary lesson having to do with astronaut Sally Ride. Clinton mentioned that she had once wanted to be an astronaut as a child (a favorite line of hers--she said it twice in Asia.)

After the lesson, the students asked questions, mostly personal stuff about balancing family and work. Only one boy, named Rafiq, brought up political issues--How would the United States help reconstruct Gaza after the war?

Again, not much news coverage was generated by the event--perhaps because it broke little new ground after similar and more widely covered interactions during the Asia jaunt. Maybe scoring news coverage is not the point, but it's unclear what Clinton learns by meeting with student groups that mostly ask her questions related to her celebrity.

The secretary might have gained more useful information, for example, by meeting with representatives of Palestinian nongovernmental groups. They could have described their struggles under Israeli occupation and the efforts to build a less corrupt government structure in the Palestinian territories.

Such groups did meet with Clinton's predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, during her visits to the region. Rice apparently wanted to get beyond the predictable talking points of the Palestinian officials. Her meetings with NGOs were not publicized, however.

Posted at 9:17 AM ET, 03/ 4/2009

Israeli Press Gets Different View of Clinton's Talks

By Glenn Kessler
RAMALLAH, West Bank, March 4--Throughout Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's journey in the Middle East, she and her media team appeared very concerned not to be seen putting pressure on the Israeli government.

At news conferences, she deferred questions, often saying she had to wait until there was a new government formed before speaking about specific policies. And her aides generally refused to comment about what she said in the meetings, despite constant queries from reporters traveling with her. In contrast, the Israeli press has carried a candid assessments of Clinton's meetings here.

For example, late Tuesday night, instead of a briefing from a real person, reporters were e-mailed "background information," which could be attributed to a "U.S. official." The missive set a new standard for useless information.

The e-mail only addressed her meetings with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, and did not mention her meetings with Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu or Defense Minister Ehud Barak. As can be seen, the effort seemed designed to show that Clinton was a solid friend of Israel--the kind of thing useful for a senator from New York but somewhat inappropriate for a secretary of State.

***
"Secretary Clinton had a very constructive conversation this morning with President Peres. They discussed the importance and strength of the US-Israeli relationship, the threat to the region posed by Iran, and the destructive role being played by Hamas."

"Secretary Clinton emphasized the enduring, unshakable, fundamental US support for Israel."

"Secretary Clinton said the US believes there is now an opportunity to engage more broadly with the Palestinians."

"On Iran, Secretary Clinton said the US shares Israel's concern about Iran. The US, she added, would continue to try to deter Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and delivery system. She noted, however, that the US would seek to engage Iran."

"Secretary Clinton also had a very substantive meeting over lunch with Foreign Minister Livni. FM Livni said 'extremist ideology' is now the biggest threat to the region. It is 'extremists vs moderates.' Livni added that the international community needs to confront terror while simultaneously working with moderates. In dealing with Iran, she added that 'time is of the essence.' The Secretary agreed and said the simultaneous task is to 'weaken extremists and strengthen moderates.'

"Both agreed on the need to support the Palestinian Authority."

***

Meanwhile, the Israeli press was getting a much different briefing from Israeli officials. According to an authorative account in Haaretz, Clinton was tough as nails. She "was critical of the 'economic peace' plan" of Netanyahu and "said that an economic initiative without a political solution had no chance to succeed," the newspaper said. That point actually generated the banner headline: "Clinton: Netanyahu's economic peace useless without diplomacy."

At her meeting with Barak, she said, "Israel must do more to open the border crossings into the Gaza Strip to larger amounts of humanitarian assistance so that civilians there could get some relief." She added in her meeting with Netanyahu that "Israel should consider whether the crossings may be more harmful than useful."

That's the kind of frank talk you'd expect from a U.S. secretary of State. Strangely, that was not the image her image-makers wanted to project.

Posted at 6:37 AM ET, 03/ 3/2009

Secretary Clinton Can Still Play Politician

By Glenn Kessler
JERUSALEM--Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's global celebrity is readily apparent here at the storied King David Hotel, where both she and her press entourage are staying.

The center of the main lobby includes the signatures of the many presidents, prime ministers and Hollywood stars who have visited the hotel over the decades. And, sure enough, there is the John Hancock of "Hillary Rodham Clinton," former first lady. Her photo also adorns one of the walls.

Surely this is a first for a Secretary of State's maiden voyage to Israel.

Clinton, of course, is also the first accomplished politician to become the chief U.S. diplomat since Sen. Edmund Muskie at the end of the Carter administration nearly three decades ago. Her political skills were on display at the news conference she held Monday night in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, after an international donors conference for Gaza.

By which I mean, Clinton did not really answer any of the questions posed to her. That takes skill and discipline.

Also, she ended with such a stirring pledge to work on peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians that Arab journalists erupted in applause at the end of the news conference. I have never seen that before in seven years of covering the diplomacy beat. I checked with a State Department official who has witnessed dozens of news conferences in the Middle East over some 30 years, and he said he had never seen such a reaction before either.

Clinton may not have any more success pursuing Middle East peace than her predecessors, and her soaring rhetoric may offer false hope. In fact, the gist of what she says in some cases differs little from her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice. But Clinton's passion for politics and her skill at public diplomacy may nevertheless do a lot to ease Arab anger at the United States.

Below is a deconstruction of parts of the news conference, with Clinton's answers following by my commentary, in italics.

Continue reading this post »

Posted at 10:33 AM ET, 03/ 2/2009

No Day at the Beach

By Glenn Kessler
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, March 2 -- Welcome to the reporters' prison camp.

The grandly titled "International Conference in Support of the Palestinian Economy for the Reconstruction of Gaza" is being held at this Red Sea resort town of beautiful beaches, soaring mountains and sparkling blue water. But we are stuck in a dreary, claustrophobic and unbelievably smoky room.

Such is the grand life of diplomatic correspondence. There are few things less glamorous than a bunch of European, Arab and Asian hacks working in stuffy rooms, puffing on no-filter cigarettes and chatting loudly.

Egypt is sponsoring this conference, with brings together 75 countries and organizations, some represented by heads of states. For security reasons, for much of the day the reporters were penned up in English, Arabic and French language rooms, where we could only watch the proceedings on big-screen plasma televisions. There was little space and even fewer outlets, meaning many reporters had to sit on the floor praying their batteries would not run out.

The conference is one of these diplomatic confabs in which high-sounding words are spoken, often to little effect. Listening to speeches, one would think the long-running Israeli-Palestinian issue was relatively easy to solve. The real work of these conferences in done in the small rooms, where the various foreign ministers and other officials hold meetings and discuss the vexing issues before them without as much public posturing.

Eventually, hours after arrival, the security lightened up a bit and reporters were able to grab various delegates, gathering scraps of information and trying to gain some context for what was said.

One U.S. official, for instance, said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a bilateral meeting with her counterpart from the United Arab Emirates, said she was doubtful Iran would respond to the administration's efforts at outreach.

Clinton made her remarks after Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan said he was worried the administration would cut a deal with Iran without properly consulting with Persian Gulf allies.

"We will be consulting with regional leaders and listening," the official quoted Clinton as saying. "She said our eyes are wide open with regard to Iran." Then she apparently added that it was doubtful the effort would yield much.

I think Clinton has expressed such sentiments before, but of course it probably had much greater impact for Nahyan to hear it himself.

We get to go through another one of these international meetings when Clinton attends a NATO ministerial in Brussels on Thursday. But NATO, thankfully, has banned all smoking inside. Sitting 10 hours in a smoky room is punishment enough for one week.