Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent the weekend in Switzerland and Ireland, but landed on the morning talk shows on Monday, fending off questions about whether she has been marginalized in the Obama administration. It’s not considered a good sign when people start asking this question in Washington, because the implication is that the answer is “yes.”

Clinton had no comment when newscaster Ann Curry on  NBC’s “Today” program asked whether she should be more visible on such hot-button issues as Iran and Afghanistan. But she responded fully when asked about concerns that the “highest-ranking woman in the United States needs to fight against being marginalized.”

“I find it absurd, I find it beyond any realistic assessment of what I’m doing every day,” Clinton said. “I believe in delegating power. I’m not one of those people who feels like I have to have my face in the front of the newspaper or on the TV every moment of the day. It would be irresponsible and negligent were I to say, ‘Oh no, everything must come to me!’”

She had a theory about why she’s comfortable working this way. “Maybe this is a woman’s thing. Maybe I’m totally secure in that I feel absolutely no need to go running around in order for people to see what I’m doing. It’s just the way I am.”

But aren’t there moments, she was asked, having campaigned so hard for president against Barack Obama, that you just want to make a decision yourself?

No. “I am part of the team that makes the decision.”

On another front, Clinton said flatly she would not run for president again. She said she’s looking forward to retirement “at some point.”

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton (Hillary Clinton in Dublin, October 11, 2009)

This is one of those Washington days that seems to defy a theme. Consider:

Iran is the topic at the Senate Banking Committee, where officials from the State and Treasury departments are set to testify on economic sanctions against Tehran.

Afghanistan is expected to be front and center when President Barack Obama briefs congressional leaders about his Afghan strategy.

Pakistan’s foreign minister has a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The Dalai Lama is in town, too, meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and getting a human rights award.

In the background is the steady drumbeat of the healthcare debate, the fight over climate change legislation and defense spending.

Serious subjects, all of them. And what was the top story on the morning network newscasts? Ten points if you guessed the natural choice: David Letterman’s sex life.

What does this say about Washington? The U.S. media? The public appetite for scandal? Let us know what you think.

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Photo credits:  REUTERS/Christinne Muschi (exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, Montreal, Canada, October 3, 2009)

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (U.S. President Barack Obama and David Letterman at a taping of the comedian’s show, New York, September 21, 2009)

When President Barack Obama was running for president, he was heavily criticized by his rivals — including his current secretary of state, Hillary Clinton — for saying he would be willing to sit down with the leaders of countries like Iran.

Well, today is the day the United States takes part for the first time as a “full participant” in talks between Iran and six world powers to discuss Tehran’s nuclear program.

Obama is not participating but he will likely be closely following results of the one-day talks in Geneva. U.S. officials have said Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns — the head of the American delegation — would not actively seek a one-on-one meeting with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator but would not reject one if the opportunity arose.

Though he’s not going to Geneva, Obama will jet over to Europe this evening for a brief, cameo appearance in Copenhagen, where he hopes his star power and charisma can help woo International Olympic Committee members and convince them to choose Chicago as the venue for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Possibly as part of an effort to avoid criticism that he is skipping work to lobby for the Olympics, Obama will put in a full day at the White House — including Oval Office meetings with Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner as well as a fundraising speech for the Democratic Governors Association — before setting off for Denmark, where he will be on the ground for just about 4 hours.

No incumbent U.S. President has ever addressed an IOC session before. A star-studded advance team including First Lady Michelle Obama, television star Oprah Winfrey and American Olympians have spent the last couple of days trying to win over votes in the hard-fought battle for the 2016 Games.

So what will Obama’s pitch be? Is there some surprise sports-related event that he’ll take part in to convince the IOC to pick Chicago instead of the other three finalists: Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo?

Or will he spend his four hours in hyper campaign mode, speaking to as many people as possible and delivering emotional speeches on behalf of his home town?

By about 12:30 pm tomorrow (1630 GMT) we should know if his gamble paid off or if he might have just given his opponents some more fodder for criticism.

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Photo credits: Reuters/Dominic Favre/pool (Iran’s chief negotiator Saeed Jalili (2L) and delegation attend talks in Geneva); Reuters/Larry Downing (Obama uses a light saber to practice his fencing stance at a White House event)

A visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to Washington, D.C., on the eve of the big talks in Geneva has our antennae twitching.

The State Department says Mottaki was just in town to inspect Iran’s unofficial diplomatic office at the Pakistani Embassy and nothing more (since the severing of diplomatic ties, Iran does not have an embassy in Washington).

Mottaki was apparently not in town for any back channel meetings with U.S. officials in D.C. ahead of talks in Geneva on Thursday between Iran and the United States and other powers.

“I wouldn’t read too much into this … it was a straightforward request and we granted it,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

Hmmmmm….

It just seems like an incredible coincidence. Why the sudden urge to inspect the office? New furniture? Perhaps some paperwork that needed to be hand-carried?

Mottaki had to get special U.S. permission to come to Washington from the United Nations in New York. And this was the week after Iran was blasted by President Barack Obama for building a second nuclear enrichment site and a day before the Geneva talks.

So it had us wondering why? The U2 concert was last night, the cherry blossoms are long gone, and the shopping is better in New York.

We asked some Washingtonians, who knew as much as we did about the visit, to guess what it might be about and got some creative responses.

The bottom line, one longtime Washington insider says, “If you were intent on having secret talks, the last place you would want to have them would be D.C.”

That doesn’t solve the mystery. What do you think?

Photo Credit: Reuters/Khaled Abdullah Ali Al Mahdi (Iran’s foreign minister Mottaki in Sanaa in June)

Everyone has their own way of broaching subjects they don’t like.

Iran has decided the best prelude to upcoming talks with Western powers that are inevitably going to end up in a finger-pointing session over Tehran’s nuclear program, is to test fire a bunch of missiles.

The United States has made clear it will focus on Iran’s nuclear program at the meeting Thursday in Geneva. Let’s see if the traditional neutrality of the Swiss venue makes a difference in keeping tempers in check (chocolates anyone?).

So what’s Iran trying to say with the missile launches which come inbetween last week’s disclosure that Tehran is building a second uranium enrichment plant and this week’s rare meeting between Iran and six major powers including the United States, China and Russia.

“It’s entirely unsurprising that the Iranians would pop off some short- and medium-range missiles in the run-up to talks,” a U.S. counterproliferation official tells Reuters.

“They could be doing this for domestic reasons as a show of strength to their own people before sitting down with the major powers,” the official says.

“Of course, it’s also possible that they conducted these tests to deflect attention away from getting caught with their hands in the nuclear cookie jar,” the offical says.

What do you think the missile test message is all about? How do you think these talks will go? Will the threat of more sanctions on Tehran have any impact?

Photo Credit: Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann (swiss chocolates), Reuters/stringer (Iranian long range missile test-fired)

Western powers are blasting Iran today for building another nuclear plant.

President Barack Obama, flanked by the leaders of France and Britain, said to reporters in Pittsburgh for the G20 meeting that “Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years.”

Iran, which revealed the existence of the uranium enrichment plant to the U.N. nuclear watchdog on Monday, unsurprisingly had a whole different take on the idea of covert.

“If it was a covert plant, we would not have informed the (International Atomic Energy) Agency,” a senior Iranian official told Reuters at the United Nations.

A U.S. official responded: “The very cursory admission to the IAEA years after the commencement of construction of such a facility whose use is undeniable does not constitute living up to its obligations.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Time magazine “we have no secrecy, we work within the framework of the IAEA.”

So there’s the latest in the long-running dispute over Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The West is concerned that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons, Tehran says it only wants nuclear power for civilian purposes.

Dictionary.com defines covert as “concealed; secret; disguised.”

So who got it right?

The United States, which tracked the project for years, calling the plant covert? Or Iran, which had the plant under construction for years and only just now informed the IAEA, saying it’s not covert?

Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama, Brown, Sarkozy at news conference on Iran), Reuters/Shannon Stapleton (Ahmadinejad at U.N.)

U.S. President Barack Obama says he wants a world without nuclear weapons. But will that ever happen?
    
Obama showed he's serious this week. He chaired a historic summit meeting of the U.N. Security Council which unanimously passed a U.S.-drafted resolution that envisages "a world without nuclear weapons".
    
It was the first time a U.S. president chaired a meeting of the Security Council since it was established in 1946.
 
John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, an advocacy group, identified serious weaknesses in the resolution, including the absence of mandatory disarmament steps for the world's five official nuclear powers -- the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia.
    
Some diplomats from countries without nuclear weapons said the lack of mandatory disarmament moves is not just a weakness, but a loophole the five big powers -- which have permanent seats and vetoes on the Security Council -- deliberately inserted into the resolution so that they wouldn't have to scrap their beloved nuclear arsenals.
 
An official from one of the five big powers appeared to confirm this in an "off-record" email to Reuters explaining the language in the resolution: "I would underline that creating the conditions for a world free of nuclear weapons is not the same as calling for a world free of nuclear weapons." He added that "the spirit of the resolution is much more about non-proliferation than disarmament."
    
A diplomat and disarmament expert from a European country with no nuclear weapons said this was typical of the "cynicism" of some permanent Security Council members. He added that the U.S. delegation had made very clear that the use of the word "disarmament" meant total nuclear disarmament -- perhaps not today, but someday. 
    
China's President Hu Jintao said China was not planning to get rid of its nuclear arsenal anytime soon. So did French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
    
The resolution didn't name Iran and North Korea. However, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Sarkozy filled in the blanks and called for tougher sanctions against Iran for defying U.N. demands to halt sensitive nuclear work.
 
The resolution didn't mention Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea, the four others known or assumed to have nuclear weapons. But it did politely ask "other states" to sign the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and get rid of their atom bombs.
 
Libya's Muammar Gaddafi was the only leader of a council member state that stayed away from the meeting. Several council diplomats expressed relief at his absence, saying they had been afraid the long-winded Gaddafi would have exceeded the five-minute limit for statements.

(Photos by Mike Segar/REUTERS)

President Barack Obama’s decision to abandon a big, fixed-installation missile defense shield in Eastern Europe is drawing some angry reaction abroad.

Conservatives in Poland, where the Bush administration planned to base interceptor rockets, and the Czech Republic, where a radar installation was planned, accused Washington of buckling to Russian pressure.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates meets Friday afternoon with his Czech counterpart, Martin Bartak, as the administration works to explain its new thinking. It may be a hard sell.

“Betrayal! The USA has sold us to the Russians and stabbed us in the back,” said the Polish tabloid Fakt.

The Czech daily Lidowe Noviny took a similar line. “Obama gave in to the Kremlin,” it said.

Some military experts viewed the decision as a sign of weakness by Obama that Moscow hardliners would try to exploit further.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin described it as “correct and brave,” and followed up Friday with a speech calling for Obama to agree to concessions on trade and technology transfer.

The Bush administration had proposed the shield to counter concerns Iran was developing a long-range missile capability that could strike at the United States.

The Obama administration said Iranian short- and medium-range missiles were a more immediate concern. It said it would scrap the antiballistic missile shield in favor of a more mobile, versatile system targeting shorter-range missiles.

U.S. newspapers were more receptive to that rationale. The New York Times called it “a sound strategic decision” and USA today said it marked the first big break in foreign policy with the former administration.

Republicans charged that it amounted to a big security concession to Russia, even as the administration said the decision was all about Iran and not Moscow.

The announcement came ahead of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York next week and the start of direct talks in October between Iran and major powers concerned about its nuclear enrichment program.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did little Friday to allay those worries.

Speaking to worshipers at Tehran University, Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust was a “lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim.”

He said it was a pretext to create a Jewish state and that Iranians had a “national and religious duty” to confront it.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a speech looking at her aims for the U.N. General Assembly, said the missile decision was a reaction to Iran, not Russia.

“We would never, never walk away from our allies,” she said.

Obama meets today with Susan Rice, his ambassador to the United Nations, ahead of the General Assembly session.

And the religious right begins its annual Washington gathering — the Value Voters Summit — looking for ways to rally conservative Christians against Obama’s agenda, including healthcare reform.

http://www.reuters.com/news/politics

Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Obama discusses missile defense Thursday); Reuters/Yuri Gripas (Gates discussing missile defense Thursday)

President Barack Obama’s new missile defense plan is an exercise in reading between the lines.

Does it signal a diminished threat from Iran if he is scrapping the Bush-era system that was to be based in Poland and the Czech Republic? Obama’s plan would use missile interceptors based on ships.

Former President George W. Bush would rattle off Iran and threats in the same sentence so often that sometimes it seemed all roads to fear led to Tehran. He wanted the missile shield as protection.

Obama said one factor guiding his decision was updated intelligence assessments of Iran’s missile programs that emphasized the threat of short- and medium-range missiles capable of reaching Europe.

So the unsaid line appears to be that the threat from a long-range missile is not prevalent.

Greg Thielmann, a former State Department intelligence official, said it became evident that Iran was not reaching some of the milestones needed to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile before 2015 as an intelligence estimate in 1999 had predicted.

On the nuclear threat, we’ve learned that key judgments still stand from a 2007 intelligence report that said “with moderate confidence” Iran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007.

The timing of Obama’s announcement — the week before the U.N. General Assembly and G20 meetings where he will mix with other world leaders — is worth raising an eyebrow. Why give away a bargaining chip ahead of time?

The fact that the announcement comes on the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, may be worth raising the other eyebrow.

Photo credit: Reuters/Morteza Nikoubazl (missile driven past picture of Iran’s supreme leader during parade in Tehran in April), Reuters/Raheb Homavandi (Man in Tehran reacts to a camera in April)

Veteran Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau is on Hugo Chavez’s case.

Morgenthau warned last week at Washington’s Brookings Institution that Iran is using Venezuela’s financial system to avoid international sanctions so it can acquire materials to develop nuclear weapons and missiles.  He urged more scrutiny of the “emerging axis of Iran and Venezuela” in an op/ed article in the Wall Street Journal, in which he said a number of mysterious Iranian factories had sprung up in remote parts of Venezuela.

Chavez’s man in Washington, Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez, called the allegations “outrageous … unfounded and irresponsible” in a letter to the district attorney seen by Reuters.

True, leftist President Chavez has done little to endear himself to Americans. A fierce critic of the United States, his foreign policy rule of thumb is my enemy’s enemies are my friends. His last trip abroad included visits to Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iran, Belarus and Russia. He loudly announced plans to buy Russian tanks and anti-aircraft missiles.

But Chavez maintains the weapons are needed to defend Venezuela, which he says is threatened by a growing U.S. military presence in neighboring Colombia. And he swears he has no intention of developing an atomic bomb.

Besides vast oil reserves, Venezuela has large deposits of uranium, though there are no signs of any plans to mine them.

“Venezuela would never participate, directly or indirectly, in any project to help any country produce weapons of mass destruction,” Alvarez wrote to Morgenthau.

The ambassador said the DA’s suspicions about Iranian factories were “particularly irresponsible” because they produce food, farming equipment, plastic goods, bicycles and dairy products.

“Sadly, your claims bring to memory the allegations of weapons of mass destruction that were said to exist in Iraq and led to that country’s invasion and the consequent loss of many Arab and American lives,” Alvarez wrote.

The diplomat said the district attorney was feeding “an unfounded and dirty campaign” against Venezuela.

Without hard evidence to show, is Morgenthau fear-mongering? What do you think?

Photo credit: Reuters/handout (Chavez speaks next to Iran’s Ahmadinejad in Tehran), Reuters/Brendan McDermid  (Morgenthau at Reuters Financial Regulation Summit in New York, April 24, 2009)