A dispute over the State Department budget has pitted the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, against a fellow Democrat and head of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, and the Obama administration.
Mr. Conrad led an effort to slash President Obama’s $58 billion international affairs request for 2011 by $4 billion, a cut his committee approved last week. Despite protests from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and all her living predecessors, the senator stood his ground on Wednesday.
“The fact is that international funding has grown significantly in recent years,” he said. “Budgets are about setting priorities. Our budget provides a responsible and balanced approach”…
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The State Department plans to create seven new senior positions to ensure that a public-diplomacy perspective is always “incorporated” in policy-making around the world, as well as to respond quickly to negative coverage of the United States in foreign media.
In an ambitious strategy that goes beyond any previous efforts to reach out to other countries, the Obama administration “seeks to become woven into the fabric of the daily lives of people” there, its top public-diplomacy official said Wednesday.
“We must do a better job of listening, learn how people in other countries and cultures listen to us, understand their desires and aspirations, and provide them with information and services of value to them,” said Judith A. McHale, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs…
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Nicholas Kralev talks about the Senate confirmation hearing of Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush’s nominee for secretary of state, on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” program, on January 18, 2005.
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Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has delighted reporters repeatedly during her travels by speaking off the cuff, but is she also speaking off the mark?
Compared with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the former first lady and senator from New York has committed only minor diplomatic gaffes. Still, twice during her trip to Asia last month, Mrs. Clinton made comments in which the accuracy was questioned by specialists and later had to be “clarified” by the State Department.
At a press conference in New Delhi on July 20, she was asked by an Indian reporter whether the United States opposed the transfer of sensitive reprocessing and enrichment nuclear technology from India to other countries…
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BEIJING — So much for the “diplo-speak” U.S. officials usually offer on trips abroad.
Newly minted Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton showed last week that she will not be constrained by diplomatic protocol or follow an official script and, so far, she seems to have the stature and celebrity to pull it off.
As she returns home Sunday from her first overseas trip since taking office, Mrs. Clinton leaves behind thousands of Asians thrilled to have met one of the world’s most famous and powerful women. At the same time, awaiting her in Washington are puzzled analysts, angry human rights activists and career diplomats not quite sure what to make of some of her comments…
