US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has contacted dozens of foreign leaders since the latest WikiLeaks disclosures, will continue to do so, she told journalists traveling with her yesterday.
“I haven’t seen everybody in the world, and apparently there are 252,000 of these things [leaks] out there in cyberspace somewhere,” she said, noting with a smile that they had not yet all been published.
“So I think I’ll have some outreach to continue doing over the next weeks just to make sure that as things become public, if they raise concerns, I will be prepared to reach out and talk to my counterparts and heads of state and governments,” she went on. “I take on the responsibility because I’m talking to them anyway. I’ve invested a lot of efforts in building these relationships I really believe that we had to re-establish trust, to re-establish relationships, so I take this very personally.”
Clinton was talking to journalists on the plane taking her back to Washington after a trip to Central Asia and Bahrain during which she came under constant pressure over the leaks.
“I’m not making light of it [but] what you see are our diplomats doing the work of diplomacy, reporting, analyzing ... in a way, it should be reassuring, despite the occasional tidbit that is pulled out and unfortunately blown up,” Clinton said. “The work of diplomacy is on display. It was not our intention to release this way [but] there’s a lot to be said for what it shows about the foreign policy of the United States.”
The US secretary of state had a rare chance to interact with Iran’s foreign minister at a Bahrain security conference, which Clinton used to deliver a message to Tehran on the need to engage with the international community over its nuclear program at next week’s talks in Geneva.
However, while Clinton’s keynote speech from the podium directly addressed the Iranian team led by Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, her attempt at a more personal diplomacy with Mottaki fell distinctly flat.
“I got up to leave and he was sitting a couple of seats down from me and shaking people’s hands and he saw me and he stopped and began to turn away,” Clinton told reporters as she returned to Washington. “I said ‘Hello, minister.’ He just turned away.”
Clinton’s Bahrain speech on Friday came ahead of next week’s Geneva meeting between Iran and six big powers — the US, France, Russia, Britain, China and Germany — their first such encounter in more than a year.
The big powers insist that the talks must focus on Iran’s nuclear program, which they fear is aimed at producing nuclear weapons.
Iranian officials have indicated that they are not eager to discuss their atomic work, which they say is entirely peaceful, leaving prospects for the Geneva meeting in doubt.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese