WASHINGTON – Barack Obama seriously considered Hillary Rodham Clinton for the vice presidency, even though his top aides weren’t enthusiastic about it, his presidential campaign manager says in a new memoir.

“Neither Ax (top-level adviser David Axelrod) nor I were fans of the Hillary option,” David Plouffe, who ran Obama’s 2008 race, said in his memoir, portions of which were published by Time magazine Thursday.

“What surprised me was that Obama was clearly thinking more seriously about picking Hillary Clinton than Ax and I had realized,” Plouffe wrote, describing a meeting the three had in late spring of last year when it became clear Obama would be the party’s standard-bearer.

Plouffe said that by early August, Obama had narrowed his list down to Sen. Joe Biden – now vice president – along with Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana and Tim Kaine of Virginia. Plouffe also wrote that “we had initially received a lot of advice from many of her (Clinton) supporters to pick her, though this ‘advice’ was perhaps more accurately described as subtle pressure.”

WASHINGTON  – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the Obama administration “deeply, deeply” regrets the loss of innocent life apparently as the result of a U.S. bombing in Afghanistan and will undertake a full review of the incident.

Opening a meeting with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan at the State Department, Clinton said Wednesday that any loss of innocent life is “particularly painful.”

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai thanked Clinton for “showing concern and regret” and added that “we hope we can work together to completely reduce civilian casualties in the struggle against terrorism.”

The international Red Cross confirmed “dozens of bodies” on Wednesday in graves and rubble where Afghan officials alleged that U.S. bombs killed civilians.

WASHINGTON – Pakistan is beginning to recognize the severity of the threat posed by an extremist insurgency that is encroaching on key urban areas, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday.

Clinton told a House appropriations subcommittee that the Obama administration is working to persuade the Pakistani government that its traditional focus on India as a threat has to shift to the Islamic extremists.

“Changing paradigms and mind-sets is not easy, but I do believe there is an increasing awareness of not just the Pakistani government but the Pakistani people that this insurgency coming closer and closer to major cities does pose such a threat.”

On Wednesday, Clinton told another House committee that in her view the Pakistani government is “basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists.”

She said Thursday that the administration’s special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, has had “painful, specific” conversations with a wide range of Pakistanis about the need to act more effectively against the insurgents.

“There is a significant opportunity here for us working in collaboration with the Pakistani government to help them get the support they need to make that mind-set change and act more vigorously against this threat,” she said, adding, “There are no promises. They have to do it.”

One measure of progress in Pakistan, she said, is the extent to which the Pakistani military is shifting its troops from the Indian border to the Afghan border, where the Taliban threat has been expanding.

Clinton was appearing before the appropriations panel that is reviewing the administration’s request for $7.1 billion in additional funds for the State Department this budget year.

Clinton said that local job creation is a key purpose of the $980 million in extra funds the State Department is requesting for its work in Afghanistan.

She told the panel that a main goal is to improve security at the local level in Afghanistan by putting more people to work. And she said the Obama administration believes that many in the Taliban insurgency who are fighting against American and Afghan forces are motivated more by money than by ideology.

WASHINGTON  – By trying to talk Iran out of its nuclear program, the U.S. is in a better position to organize tougher international sanctions in the event that diplomacy fails, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday.

“We actually believe that by following the diplomatic path we are on, we gain credibility and influence with a number of nations who would have to participate in order to make the sanctions regime as tight and as crippling as we would want it to be,” Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Iran denies that its nuclear program is intended to develop weapons.

The official Iranian news agency IRNA reported Wednesday that Iran welcomes a “constructive” dialogue with world powers over its nuclear program, but insisted that it won’t halt its uranium enrichment activities.

The Iranian report was in response to an invitation from the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia for a new round of nuclear talks. No date has been set.

Clinton said the administration is confident that with the help of international partners, it can put together a comprehensive sanctions regime against Iran, “should we need it.” She said it would be needed “in the event we are unsuccessful or stonewalled in our other approach.”

The House hearing was Clinton’s first congressional testimony since her confirmation hearing in January, and the questions were mostly friendly. Panel members initially focused mainly on Iran, the Islamic extremist threat in Pakistan and U.S. policy toward Cuba. Some Republicans pressed her on the administration’s release of formerly classified documents on detainee interrogation methods used during the Bush administration, but she deflected those inquiries, saying it was not a matter for her to discuss publicly.

Clinton was at her most emotional in batting down questions from Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., about the Obama administration’s support for international family planning services. Smith and Fortenberry are among Capitol Hill’s staunchest abortion opponents.

Smith asked if the administration was seeking “in any way to weaken or overturn pro-life laws and policies in African and Latin American countries.” Fortenberry asked: “Is forcing U.S. taxpayers to fund abortion in keeping with the highest values of the United States of America?”

“We have a very fundamental disagreement,” Clinton told Smith, describing how she had seen women suffering in Africa, Latin America and Asia because of inadequate family planning and health care.

“It is my strongly held view that you are entitled to advocate, and everyone who agrees with you should be free to do so, anywhere in the world and so are we,” Clinton said. “We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women’s health and reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal and rare.”

On Iran, Clinton said its nuclear program are one of the administration’s highest foreign policy priorities.

“We are deploying new approaches to the threat posed by Iran and we’re doing so with our eyes wide open and with no illusions,” she said.

“We know the imperative of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,” she added. “After years during which the United States basically sat on the sidelines, we are now a full partner” in international talks on Iran.

The committee chairman, Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., asked Clinton how much time it would take to get results on Iran. She did not reply directly but said the administration believes it has set the stage for progress by interacting more directly with allies and by reaching out to the Iranian authorities.

“It is going to be a more successful engagement if our partners around the world understand they must work with us,” including on consultations aimed at imposing tougher sanctions on Iran, Clinton said.

“The fact that we are engaging … actually gives us more leverage with other nations.”

Clinton was asked about the case of Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent from Coral Springs, Fla., last seen on Iran’s Kish Island on March 8, 2007. He disappeared while investigating cigarette smuggling for a client of his private security firm. Clinton complained that “there has been nothing coming out of the Iranian government” on Levinson and said the administration would not give up on the case.

In her opening remarks to the panel, Clinton said the core goal of President Barack Obama’s anti-terror strategy is to defeat al-Qaida and prevent its return to Afghanistan.

Berman said the panel is concerned about Islamic extremists gaining momentum in Pakistan. The California Democrat said the U.S. cannot allow the extremists to take over Pakistan or to operate with impunity on Afghanistan’s border.

Clinton asserted in response that the international community is working closely together to address the problem of extremism in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Would you like to spend a day with Bill Clinton, followed by a free weekend in New York City? Would you like to attend the season finale of American Idol? Would you like to talk politics over lunch with James Carville and Paul Begala?

The United States has offered more than $900 million to help the Palestinian people, particularly those in Gaza, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Monday.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that North Korea is trying to “drive a wedge” between the U.S. and South Korea, CNN reports.

TOKYO – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton used her first overseas trip to declare a new era in relations with Asia, seeking a more global framework of cooperation on common threats like financial instability, nuclear proliferation and climate change.

But the protracted issue of reining in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions cast a long shadow as Clinton opened a weeklong tour of Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China in Tokyo.

“I have come to Asia on my first trip as secretary of state to convey that America’s relationships across the Pacific are indispensable to addressing the challenges and seizing the opportunities of the 21st century,” she said.

“We will be looking for ways to collaborate on issues that go beyond just our mutual concerns to really addressing global concerns,” Clinton said at a ceremony to commemorate the arrival of the first secretary of state ever to make Japan their first overseas stop.

Yet Clinton’s message was in danger of being overshadowed by a surge in bellicose rhetoric from North Korea, which just hours before vowed to press ahead with test-firing what wary neighboring governments, particularly Japan and South Korea, believe is a long-range missile. Japan, with an unpopular government and struggling with deep economic woes, is particularly jittery at the moment and Clinton aims to reassure the country of its importance in the international arena.

“The bilateral relationship between the United States and Japan is a cornerstone in our efforts around the world,” she said. On Tuesday, she is expected to announce that she will send a special U.S. envoy to a Japanese-hosted donors conference for Pakistan. In addition to meeting with top government officials and members of the opposition, Clinton will sign an agreement to move about 8,000 of the 50,000 Marines on the island of Okinawa to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.

But, North Korea looms large over her visit. She has promised to meet with the families of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. “We do want to press the North Koreans to be more forthcoming with information,” she said en route to Tokyo.

Last week, she had warned North Korea against any “provocative action and unhelpful rhetoric” amid signs the Stalinist nation was preparing to test fire a missile capable of reaching the western United States.

But on Monday, the 67th birthday of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, Pyongyang claimed it has the right to “space development” – a term it has used in the past to disguise a missile test as a satellite launch. When North Korea test-fired a long-range missile in 1998, it claimed to have put a satellite into orbit.

On Sunday, Clinton said told reporters aboard her plane that North Korea needs to live up to commitments to dismantle its nuclear programs, saying Washington is willing to normalize ties with it in return for nuclear disarmament.

“The North Koreans have already agreed to dismantling,” she said. “We expect them to fulfill the obligations that they entered into.”

She also implicitly criticized the Bush administration for abandoning the so-called 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea, reached during President Bill Clinton’s first term in the White House, which called for the North to give up its plutonium-based weapons program.

The framework collapsed when the Bush team accused Pyongyang of maintaining a separate highly enriched uranium program, about which Secretary Clinton said there was still great debate. As a result, she said, the North had restarted and accelerated its plutonium program, allowing it to build a nuclear device that it had detonated in 2006.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Former President Bill Clinton is visiting North Carolina to speak with both supporters and donors.

Clinton will speak Monday morning at North Carolina State University, addressing a crowd about the future of America and issues facing the country. The university said there are no more general public tickets available.
 
After the event, Clinton will attend a lunch fundraiser for western North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler. Clinton and Shuler have been building a relationship since Clinton reached out to the former NFL quarterback as Democrats recruited him to run for Congress in the 2006 election.

In 2008, Shuler endorsed Clinton’s wife, now Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her run for the White House. He did so after she won the primary in his district.