Clinton makes first visit to Asia [View All]

[Turborama]

Source: BBC

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has set off on her first overseas visit as top US diplomat days after pledging greater engagement with Asia. Her stops in Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China are the first time the region has been the initial trip for a secretary of state since the 1960s.

She will reassure Japan that its ties with the US remain strong, says the BBC's Kim Ghattas in Washington. She will hope to find a partner not a rival in China, our correspondent says.

Mrs Clinton has said that the US is keen to broaden and deepen its ties with Asia. "I hope to signal that we need strong partners across the Pacific, just as we need strong partners across the Atlantic," she said in a speech at the Asia Society in New York on Friday. "We are, after all, both a trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific power."

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But her final stop, China, will be at the heart of the tour, our correspondent adds. When she was running for president last year, Mrs Clinton wrote an article outlining her foreign policy stating that America's relationship with China would be the most important bilateral relationship in the world this century. Speaking to the BBC on Friday, Mrs Clinton said there were real opportunities to develop a good relationship with Beijing on issues such as climate change and clean energy.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7891511.stm

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Source: The Guardian

Clinton tries to build China climate pact

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington

Saturday 14 February 2009

Hillary Clinton hopes to recruit China as a partner in American efforts to reduce global warming when she embarks on her first trip as secretary of state with a seven-day tour through Asia this week. Clinton believes that creating common ground on climate change, starting with a presidential summit later this year, will help reconfigure America's ties with China, advisers say. A partnership between the world's two biggest polluters would significantly raise the prospects of a global climate change deal at a crucial UN meeting in Copenhagen in December.

Breaking with the tradition for secretaries of state to visit Europe first, Clinton's tour, which starts tomorrow, will take her to Japan, Indonesia and South Korea, with China as her last stop.

Clinton set out her ideas for the climate change partnership yesterday at the Asia Society in New York. The choice of venue was telling: experts from the Asia Society and the Pew Centre for Climate Change produced a report this week setting out a roadmap for a US-Chinese partnership in tackling climate change. Clinton was first briefed on the report several months ago and members of her team consulted the authors this week. Those involved say she sees joint action on climate change as a means to reset the relationship beyond the narrowly focused economic interests of the Bush era.

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Stern, who will accompany Clinton, said last week that it was time to open a new chapter on climate change talks. He told the New York Times: "We need to put finger-pointing aside and focus on how our two leading nations can work together productively to solve the problem."

Chinese officials have also been sending out signals of co-operation. At a Brookings Institution forum last week, Beijing's ambassador to the US, Zhou Wenzhong, said China and America, by working together, could help set the stage for progress at the climate change meeting in Copenhagen in December.

The US and China together account for more than 40% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/14/hillary-clinton-china-climate

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No details on her trip to Indonesia, perhaps she's laying the groundwork for President Obama's upcoming trip there...?