Afghanistan

Secretary Clinton, above talking with Pakistanis in Islamabad today, will be on PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer tonight (check local listings for the exact time). She was interviewed in Islamabad today by the NewsHour's Margaret Warner. I've read the transcript, and Clinton says a lot of important things about her time in Pakistan this week and U.S. and Pakistani efforts to go after extremists. I'm not allowed to post the entire transcript, but here's how the interview begins:

Warner: Secretary Clinton, thanks for being with us. Now you've been to Pakistan many times but never as Secretary of State, never at such a volatile time.

Clinton: Right.

Warner: Was there anything unexpected that you found here? Something that you didn't imagine?

Clinton: Well, Margaret it, it wasn't that I found here anything unexpected. It was that I knew before I came that we had our work cut out for us, that there was a level of um, mistrust and misunderstanding uh that I wanted to tackle head-on. I have a great deal of admiration uh, for uh, the culture and the history and the struggle of the people of Pakistan. But what became clear in the time that I've been Secretary of State, is that there was an enormous number of questions about our motive, our intention, our actions that had been built up over the last 8 years. So I wanted to try to address those and go out and meet people and hear and listen and have a really, a good dialogue which I think we've had.

Secretary Clinton will be on ABC's Nightline at 11:35 p.m. (U.S. Eastern time) tonight. Her interview was taped earlier today in Moscow, and if you can't watch it, you can read an edited transcript here. In the interview, Clinton discusses important issues such as Afghanistan strategy and Iran. As the clip above shows, she also mentions that she "absolutely" would have asked Barack Obama to be in her cabinet had she been elected president last year.

Video: Politico

Secretary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are in harmony on many foreign-policy issues, according to a recent New York Times article. Tensions between the secretaries of state and defense have often been "epic" in previous administrations, but the two get along remarkably well, even talking Afghanistan policy over a long private dinner at the Blue Duck Tavern last week after their joint talk for CNN.

Over at FP's Shadow Government blog, Peter Feaver comments.

A briefing of Clinton news:

•Afghanistan: U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Secretary Clinton has "zero tolerance" for the lewd, disgusting behavior of private security guards at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan.

•Honduras: Today in Washington Clinton meets with Manuel Zelaya, the ousted Honduran president seen at left a few weeks before he was removed from office. If the State Department formally declares that his ouster was a coup, then U.S. foreign aid to Honduras will be suspended.

•Chelsea: August passed, and contrary to rumors, daughter Chelsea did not get married, even though the Washington Post provided instructions on how to have a secret wedding.

•Bill: No. 7 on Politico's list of "21 Things You Can't Say to the President on His Summer Vacation": "President [Bill] Clinton called and says he is willing to fly to Afghanistan to investigate allegations of wild parties in Kabul. He’s called four times, in fact."

•Op-ed: A fan of Madam Secretary has written an op-ed, "Clinton Has Her Own Problems," that discusses, among other things, the secretary of state's difficulties in filling vacant State Department positions due to the onerous security-clearance process.

Photo: ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images

Secretary Clinton testified yesterday (as seen above) in front of a Senate subcommittee that the United States is "being out-communicated by the Taliban and al Qaeda" and that it needs a "new strategic communication strategy" in order to "do a better job of getting the story of the values, ideals, the results of democracy out to people who are now being fed a steady diet of the [worst] kind of disinformation."

Al Qaeda's propagandists produce high-quality videos and elaborate Web sites, which has led U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates to often say, "We're being out-communicated by a guy in a cave."

Clinton didn't provide details about what any "new strategic communication strategy" would involve, but whatever it is, let's hope it follows sound media ethics. In the past, the United States secretly paid Iraqi newspapers to run articles written by U.S. troops. In 2006, the Defense Department's inspector general discovered that the Lincoln Group, a private contractor, had paid Iraqi media outlets to run articles without attribution that were favorable to the U.S. military.

It's doubtful, though, that Clinton would support such tactics. According to a 2008 Washington Post article, when then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld learned about the Lincoln Group's "anonymous pay-to-publish program," he told reporters, "Gee, that's not what we ought to be doing."

Clinton, the e-diplomat, has hinted a bit at what her communications strategy would involve. Tuesday, she mentioned reaching out directly to displaced Pakistanis on their cellphones.

In all fairness, FP -- the print edition -- runs multipage ads from various countries, which are clearly marked as "Special Advertising Supplement." The May/June issue has supplements from the Dominican Republic, Angola, and Cabinda (an Angolan province).

And speaking of Angola, Clinton has that country on her schedule today:

11:00 a.m. Bilateral with His Excellency Ansuncao Afonso dos Anjos, Minister of External Relations of the Republic of Angola.

11:45 a.m. Meeting with Joint Summit Working Group.

2:00 p.m. Bilateral with His Excellency Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, President of the United Republic of Tanzania.

4:15 p.m. Attend The President's bilateral with Excellency Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, President of the United Republic of Tanzania.

Photo: TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

After yesterday's trilateral, Secretary Clinton is back to bilaterals today, as her schedule below shows. She meets again with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (let's hope there's no reset button involved this time).

10:30 a.m. Bilateral with His Excellency Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
 
10:45 a.m. Bilateral with His Excellency Makhdoom Shah Mehmood [Qureshi], Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
 
11:00 a.m. Bilateral with His Excellency Miroslav Lajcak, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic
 
12:00 p.m. Bilateral with His Excellency Sergey Lavrov, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation
 
1:15 p.m. Working Lunch for His Excellency Sergey Lavrov, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation
 
3:45 p.m. Bilateral with His Excellency Franco Frattini, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Italian Republic

After a day heavy with bilaterals (including one with Israeli President Shimon Peres, above), Secretary Clinton has a crucially important day today. The presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan are in Washington. She has a bilateral with each and a trilateral with both together.

Some people, including Clinton, fear that Pakistan's Taliban insurgency threatens the government. Two weeks ago, with Islamist militants just 60 miles from Islamabad, the capital of nuclear-armed Pakistan, Clinton declared to the House Foreign Affairs Committee: "[We] cannot underscore [enough] the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan by the continuing advances."

9:15 a.m. Bilateral with His Excellency Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
 
9:45 a.m. Bilateral with His Excellency Asif Ali Zardari, President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
 
10:30 a.m. US-Afghanistan-Pakistan Trilateral Consultations II

Photo: Amos Ben Gershom/GPO via Getty Images

Secretary Clinton is at The Hague in the Netherlands for today's international conference on Afghanistan. She will not be having any "substantive" discussions with Iranian officials there, but they did share a conference table earlier today.

On another note, Clinton has said the phrase, "war on terror," is finished. The Associated Press reports that on her way to The Hague she said:

"The [Obama] administration has stopped using the phrase, and I think that speaks for itself."

Clinton is in the Netherlands, so, of course, I have to include this photo with tulips:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives on March 31 with Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen for the start of the international conference on Afghanistan in The Hague. Afghanistan's international backers, including Iran, are gathering to try to bring new impetus to efforts to combat the Taliban-led insurgency, help spread democracy, and rebuild.

Photos: ROBERT VOS/AFP/Getty Images