Bill Clinton...at DAVOS.(Leaders of the business, political and philanthropic worlds are gathering in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. The unrelenting economic gloom and the fragility of the banking system have cast a cloud over the global agenda and are likely to dominate discussions.)
George Mitchell ...in the Middle East (Cairo; Jerusalem; the West Bank; Amman, Jordan--- and a stop in Paris)
Richard Holbrooke..... next week to Pakistan and Afghanistan, stopping en route at a security conference in Munich.
Obama...next week to Canada.
Biden....to Munich conference.
Nothing yet on the calendar for Hillary.
January 31, 2009
Curiosity Over Clinton’s Itinerary
By MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is clearly itching to hit the road. But to where?
“We’ll let you know as soon as we get it organized,” she told reporters earlier this week. “I’m looking forward to it.”
A secretary of state’s first foreign trip is always an event — steeped in symbolism and parsed for clues about how the new boss will conduct diplomacy. In Mrs. Clinton’s case, her celebrity lends the maiden voyage added glitter, but also the burden of great expectations.
This time, the choice of the itinerary has been further complicated by the fact that the White House appointed two special emissaries who wasted no time booking their own foreign travel.
George J. Mitchell, the special envoy for the Middle East, is halfway through a weeklong tour of the region, visiting Cairo; Jerusalem; the West Bank; Amman, Jordan; and tacking on a stop in Paris. Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, is headed to those countries next week, stopping en route at a security conference in Munich.
Other senior officials are footloose, too. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Gen. James L. Jones, the president’s national security adviser, are also heading to the Munich conference. President Obama is traveling to Canada next month for his first foreign trip as president. And in April, he will go to London for a summit meeting on the financial crisis and a NATO meeting jointly hosted by France and Germany.
With so many old-world capitals and gritty hot spots spoken for, what’s left for a restless secretary of state?
Asia, according to the latest speculation at the State Department.
While no final decision has been made — and travel schedules are fickle — Mrs. Clinton is leaning toward a trip that would include Japan and China, according to officials. That would allow her to check in with a staunch ally and take stock of an economic rival. A stop in South Korea would put Mrs. Clinton close to one of her looming challenges: North Korea’s nuclear program.
Asia is not an obvious choice: her two most recent predecessors, Condoleezza Rice and Colin L. Powell, started off in Europe and the Middle East. Ms. Rice felt obliged to go to Paris and Berlin, one former adviser said, to mend fences after the invasion of Iraq.
The Obama administration, officials said, is determined to spread its senior people around. With so many big names trooping off to Europe, they said, Mrs. Clinton can deliver a greater diplomatic punch by going to Asia. Besides, said one old hand, if no one of her stature shows up in Tokyo by April or so, the Japanese will wonder what is wrong with the relationship.
The political calendar plays a role, too: Israel is holding elections on Feb. 10, and analysts said it would not make sense for Mrs. Clinton to travel there before a new government was in place.
Secretaries of state have traveled abroad since 1866, when William Henry Seward sailed to the Virgin Islands, then a Danish colony. But their wanderlust has varied: Ms. Rice racked up more than a million miles on 86 trips. General Powell, who was criticized for being a homebody, still managed 68 trips.
Mrs. Clinton is expected to fall somewhere in between. She told a recent meeting of senior State Department staff members that she wanted to go on the road only when her presence could make a difference, according to people in the session. That would suggest fewer trips than Ms. Rice, who practically commuted to the Middle East and, critics said, had little to show for it.
But maybe not that many fewer: Mrs. Clinton, her aides like to note, visited all 62 counties in New York State during her first Senate campaign. And now she will have a bigger plane.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Posted By: Marta Fernandez
Tuesday, February 3rd 2009 at 3:55PM
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