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)

Nearly naked, drunken guys dancing around a bonfire and engaging in lewd conduct. And there are pictures and videos. No it’s not a frat party gone wild.  It’s downtime for some private security contractors hired to protect the U.S. embassy in Kabul,  according to the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight.

The watchdog group says the alleged misbehavior by the guards working for ArmorGroup North America — along with serious under-staffing — has jeopardized security at the embassy amid rising violence in the Afghan capital.

The Project sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a lengthy letter documenting complaints about the guards. The group also sent pictures and videos backing its allegations.

And it cited a “‘Lord of the Flies’ environment” among some English-speakers at the camp where the men are stationed, marked by hazing of recruits, drunkenness and lewd conduct.

About 150 guards are Americans or from other English-speaking countries. The remaining 300 were  identified by the Project on Government Oversight as Gurkhas from northern India and Nepal who speak little or no English.

Pictures obtained by the group show male guards, scantily dressed in G-string style garments, dancing around a bonfire and urinating while others snap photographs.

Video show them pouring alcohol down the bare backside of a new recruit and trying to drink it as it spills from the man’s buttocks.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly called the allegations “serious” and said they had been referred to the department’s inspector general.

ArmorGroup North America had no immediate comment on the allegations.

About 1,000 U.S. diplomats, staff and Afghan nationals work at the embassy in Kabul.

Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, urged the State Department to put Kabul embassy security under military supervision and consider initiating suspension proceedings against ArmorGroup and its parent company, Wackenhut Services Inc.

He’s driven Exxon out of his country and suggested former U.S. President George W. Bush was the devil incarnate.

But Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez really teed off the State Department with his latest outrage — calling golf a bourgeois sport.

“My position, independent of what anyone else thinks, is that it’s a bourgeois sport,” the baseball-loving Chavez told his weekly television audience in July.

“There is no justification for having a golf course in the middle of a city, when there is such a shortage of land for housing for the people, including the middle class.”

Since his comments, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, pro-Chavez officials have moved to close two of Venezuela’s best-known golf courses — in Maracay and Caraballeda.

This did not go unnoticed by U.S. diplomats.

“As the Department of State’s self-appointed ambassador-at-large for golf,  I wish to protest the unwarranted attack by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on the game of golf,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said at the start of Wednesday’s briefing.

And he was just warming to the theme.

He pointed to Angel Cabrera, who grew up on the streets of Argentina and won this year’s Masters. And to the man he defeated, Kenny Perry, who once had to borrow money from a church friend to keep playing.

Then there was virtual unknown Lucas Glover winning the U.S. Open, and Tom Watson coming oh-so-close to taking the British Open at the age of 59.

And Tiger Woods, of course.

Said Crowley: “Considering that the hemisphere celebrated the victory of (a) former caddy and son of Argentina in the Masters over a good-old-boy who built a public course in his hometown in Kentucky, and we cheered as a relative unknown from South Carolina won the peoples’ open on the country’s finest public course at Bethpage Black. We were in awe as a 59-year-old man held off the greatest golfers of the world for 71 holes on links land in Scotland, where the game of golf was created. And now we are on the eve of the season’s final major where the favorite to win is arguably the greatest golfer of all time and whose heritage literally spans continents.”

“So the suggestion by Mr. Chavez that golf, a truly global sport, is bourgeois, is a mulligan. And once again, Mr. Chavez, one of the hemisphere’s most divisive figures, finds himself out of bounds.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Russell Cheyne (Angel Cabrera at British Open July 19); Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins (Chavez bats in a softball game in January)

Some days, you really have to feel for Hillary Clinton. And this could be one of those days.

Secretary of State Clinton’s bad day started Monday in Kinshasa, in the middle of a grueling African trip, when a translator goofed and made it sound as if a questioner wanted to know what Clinton’s husband Bill thought of a particular issue. While on this tour, she’d already had to comment on the former president’s humanitarian mission to free to U.S. journalists from North Korea, and basically, she’d had about enough.

Read a just-the-facts Reuters story on what happened here and watch the video below.

But because the Clintons are the Clintons, with a long history in the public eye, that was hardly the end of it. Tuesday morning television — CNN, ABC, NBC, others — replayed the video of Hillary Clinton snapping at the student questioner: “You want me to tell you what my husband thinks? If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion, I am not going to be channeling my husband.” It was a five-star video on YouTube.

Back at the State Department, Assistant Secretary P.J. Crowley acknowledged that the question, however poorly it was translated — the questioner wanted to know what President Barack Obama thought, not former President Clinton — struck a nerve. Crowley told CNN that her reaction had to be taken in the context of her African trip, where she has worked to draw attention to the plight of women who are victims of rape as a weapon of war in Congo.

“If Africa, if Congo is going to advance, women have to play a more significant role. She was in the setting of a town hall, and the questioner was interested in what two men thought, not the secretary of state,” Crowley said.

No question about it, Hillary Clinton is a polarizing figure. But whatever you think, being secretary of state is challenging enough, especially on an exhausting trip to a continent with critical diplomatic issues, without being second-guessed about how she feels when asked questions involving her high-profile husband or the man she ran against who is now president.

Or is she fair game, no matter what the circumstances?

In domestic U.S. politics, Obama heads for Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for a town hall meeting on health care. Fireworks possible.

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Joe Bavier (Hillary Clinton in Kinshasa, August 10, 2009)

He’s been preparing for this moment since long before he came to the White House, so President Barack Obama might wonder how his Cairo speech to the Muslim world went over. He wouldn’t have to wait long — within minutes after he ended his address, the reviews started flooding in.

The Washington Post said Obama did well, but basically, talk’s cheap: “Perhaps today’s words, from the son of a Muslim, will be viewed as a welcome olive branch. But it’s still just a speech. And even stirring words can’t paper over the seemingly intractable differences in the Mideast.”

The New York Post got a bit snarky: “If world peace is attained by complimenting those on the other side into submission, he made some serious progress. Obama really buttered them up in Cairo.”

The Drudge Report noted how long the speech was: the Web site showed a photo of Obama speaking, over the line “6,000 words”.

In Iran, there was a sort of pre-emptive review, issued even before Obama spoke: Iran’s supreme leader said United States was deeply hated in the Middle East, and warned Obama that “beautiful” speeches alone would not improve the U.S. image in the Muslim world.

More reviews are definitely expected to trickle in, since Obama’s speech was a multimedia event. If you missed the live broadcast, you could also see part or all of the speech online at Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites. The White House ran the speech live on its website, and the State Department streamed it as part of a live chat – and the chat continued long after the speech ended.

One comment found there sounded like a rave: “Barack Hussein Obama is definitely an ”Elevation” leader that makes one vibrate while listening to him!”

Around Washington today, Israeli Defense Miniser Ehud Barak meets with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Admiral Eric Olson, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, testifies next year’s budget request, and FBI Director Robert Mueller appears before a panel of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih (Egyptian citizens watch Obama’s speech in Cairo)

Seasoned U.S. diplomat Chris Hill showed some jitters on Wednesday over being nominated as next U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

“I just don’t want to screw it up,” said Hill, in fairly undiplomatic language at a confirmation hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

As new U.S. ambassador, Hill would oversee the drawdown of U.S. troops.

Hill has faced some opposition as next U.S. ambassador to Iraq but he had a fairly smooth hearing on Wednesday.

Critics Arizona Sen. John McCain and Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, who have questioned Hill’s lack of Middle East experience and whether he was tough enough in talks with North Korea, were not on the panel.

Hill is currently the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and has also served as ambassador to Poland, Macedonia and South Korea. He was also envoy on six-nation talks over scrapping North Korea’s nuclear program.

The veteran diplomat is expected to clear a vote by the panel next week but opponents could seek to delay a vote on the Senate floor.

The panel’s chairman, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and top Republican Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar urged Hill’s confirmation as soon as possible.

While showing some apprehension over his new posting, Hill said he was looking forward to a family reunion in Iraq. His son is stationed with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in Iraq.

Hill told senators he hoped he hadn’t blown his son’s cover by revealing that.

REUTERS/Jo Yong-Hak  (U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill speaks to reporters in Seoul)

WASHINGTON - Bill Clinton was not in the room, but his presence was certainly felt at Hillary Clinton’s long confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee considered her nomination to be Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, Republicans on the  panel raised the potentially thorny subject of the former president’s charity, which has received donations from several nations including the governments of Saudi Arabia and Norway.

They questioned whether appropriate steps had been taken to avoid possible foreign policy conflicts if Sen. Clinton, of New York, is confirmed.

“I think a lot of folks legitimately share these concerns across the spectrum, from the New York Times to Senator Lugar, who submitted some questions about it to me,” Louisiana Republican David Vitter said.

Richard Lugar of Indiana, the panel’s senior Republican, had raised the issue earlier in the hearing.  Clinton gave a lengthy response to Vitter and offered to go into even more detail. But Vitter was concerned about running out of time.

“Mr. Chairman, I have no objection listening to this, but I’d like it not to come out of my time, because I’d like to pursue these questions,” Vitter said.

“Well, I guess it’s fair to say that if you ask a question, you deserve an answer, and the answer traditionally comes out of the time of the senator,” committee Chairman John Kerry of Massachusetts responded.

Later, when Virginia Democrat James Webb finally greeted Clinton, he noted that he had the pleasure of having sat through the entire day-long hearing. “I’m so far down the food chain that I had to wait until 3 o’clock this afternoon to ask my questions,” the freshman senator said.

 The hearing began at 9:30 a.m.

Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Clinton with daughter Chelsea in background)

Don’t look for Condoleezza Rice to get all sentimental about waving goodbye to Washington after the Bush administration leaves office on Jan. 20.

It’s no secret that the Secretary of State plans to go back to California. But will she miss life in the U.S. capital?

“No,” Rice said, laughing, in a CNN interview.

She has been a top adviser to President George W. Bush for eight years — first as national security adviser before moving to the State Department in 2005.

Before joining the Bush administration, Rice was provost at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and she’s ready to return to the Golden State.

“It’s not that I haven’t loved being here,” Rice said, referring to Washington.

“But the truth of the matter is, from the first time that my family crossed the Kansas border into Colorado when I was six, I knew I should live west of the Mississippi,” said Rice, who was born in Birmingham, Alabama. “I just love the West. It’s open and it’s different and it’s entrepreneurial.”

Rice said she is fond of some of the cities in the East but ”really, really loves being West.”

U.S. Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton won the swift and hearty support of one former globe-trotting U.S. president: her husband, Bill Clinton. 

Just minutes after President-elect Barack Obama nominated Hillary Clinton as his top diplomat on Monday, Bill Clinton issued a statement of praise.

“As an American, I am thankful,” Bill Clinton said. “As her husband, I am deeply proud.”

Bill and Hillary Clinton had crossed swords with Obama in her failed bid to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

But the Clintons set aside any hard feelings to campaign for Obama against Republican rival John McCain in the general election.

Obama rewarded their efforts by picking the former first lady turned U.S. senator from New York for his cabinet. Bill Clinton said that he made a perfect pick.

“She is the right person for the job of helping to restore America’s image abroad, end the war in Iraq, advance peace and increase our security, by building a future for our children with more partners and fewer adversaries,” Bill Clinton said.

“I commend President-Elect Obama for asking her to be a part of a great national security team. America will be well-served,” Clinton said.

WASHINGTON - With the election over, it is time to say happy trails to Reuters “Tales from the Trail” election blog and give a warm welcome to “Front Row Washington” which will provide readers a view from Reuters correspondents working the political beat around town and the country.

Reuters has a front row seat to all the action in Washington, whether in the White House, Pentagon, State Department briefing rooms or in halls of Congress. From here we will offer readers insight, analysis and behind-the-scenes stories as Democrats move into the White House and Republicans try to influence policy decisions.

We heartily thank all our readers over the last year or so who have made this blog a success and invite you to stay tuned because it will be a fun ride over the coming years.

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